Festivals: Fantasia
Fantasia 2025 Interview: KAKUKAKU SHIKAJIKA, Akiko Higashimura and Mei Nagano Talk Bringing a Mangaka's Autobiographical Work To Screen
A beloved manga artist and her on-screen counterpart discuss the live-action adaptation.
Fantasia 2025 Review: ALL YOU NEED IS KILL, Big Action in Anime Adaptation of Landmark Sci-fi Novel
One year ago, a giant, alien plant called Doral landed on Earth and took root in the Earth’s crust, and has lain dormant since. For the past year, teams of young volunteers, armed with high-tech suits and gear, wake up...
Fantasia 2025 Review: THE GIRL WHO STOLE TIME, After the Animation Dazzles, the Story Grabs Your Heartstrings
Qian Xiao grew up in a quiet fishing village, but she’s never wanted a peaceful life. She wants out, and when she spots a supply boat heading to the mainland, she sneaks aboard without a plan. Midway through the...
Fantasia 2025: FLUSH, BURNING And THE UNDERTONE Score Audience Awards
I have been back a day since leaving the final leg of Fantasia, and I quickly started hating everything, everyone, and everywhere that isn't the festival. Feels good to be back to normal. All throughout the festival, attendees were...
Fantasia 2025 Review: STRAIGHT OUTTA SPACE, A Sci-fi Comedy With Good Intentions
In the low-income neighborhood of Schijndrecht, best friends Amin and Mitchell work as street coaches, helping residents and maintaining order. But everything changes when the area faces redevelopment plans, so Amin considers moving away with his girlfriend, Stef. However, an...
Fantasia 2025 Review: BURNING, A Rashoman-Style Horror Thriller Calls Out For Social Change
An explosion tears through the silence of an otherwise quiet Kyrgyzstan town. What happened to the couple that lived there? Asel and her husband, Marat. And didn’t his mother, Farida, just arrive in town to help around the house? ...
Fantasia 2025 Review: THE SCHOOL DUEL, When Dystopia Doesn't Feel So Distant
We are thrown into a twisted, ultra-patriotic Florida where guns, God, and old-school values rule. 13-year-old Sam, a bullied kid who just wants to feel seen, instead he lashes out at his tormentors, even his mom. Sam’s actions catch the...
Fantasia 2025 Review: FOREIGNER, A Newcomer, Coming-of-Age Horror For The Tween Set
Yasamin (Yasi), a recently immigrated Iranian teen in Canada, struggles to fit in at her new high school. She falls in with a clique of white girls whose subtle racism pressures her to erase her identity. Desperate to belong, Yasi...
Fantasia 2025 Review: FLUSH, The Horrors And Hilarity When Trapped in a Toilet
Luc has gone to the club where his ex, Valentine, works to convince her to go with him to see their daughter, who is now living in foster care with his parents. A struggling addict, though, he buys a line...
Fantasia 2025 Review: OCCUPY CANNES, After Decades of Disrupting Media, Here is That Year Troma Disrupted Cannes
In 2013, the Troma Team returned to the Cannes Film Festival’s Marché du film for the first time in a decade. Their mission was twofold. First, sell their latest production at the time, Return to Nuke ‘Em High Volume 1....
Fantasia 2025 Review: THE BOOK OF SIJJIN AND ILLYYIN, Payback Is a Bitch
When Yuli was a child, she watched in horror as her mom was possessed by an spiritual force before killing her father. Parentless, she was treated as an outsider, a bastard. Twenty years have passed, and she is now a...
Fantasia 2025 Review: DOLLHOUSE, A Worthy And Entertaining Addition to The Cursed Doll Genre
Yoshie and her husband Tadahiko devote all their energy and love to five-year-old Mei. The day that Yoshie is tasked with looking after the gaggle of girls in the neighbourhood, she has them all over for a play day with...
Fantasia 2025 Review: THE UNDERTONE, Scary to Watch, Terrifying to Listen to
Evy is back at her mother’s home, watching over her as she lies on her deathbed, her passing inevitable. When she is not caring for her mom, Evy hosts The Undertone, a paranormal podcast she co-hosts with her friend Justin....
Fantasia 2025 Review: KAZAKH SCARY TALES, Too Scary For The Locals, What About International Horror Fans?
Birzhan, a big-city detective, moves his family to the remote village of Karatas and is called to investigate an eerie series of events at a maternity hospital. Pregnant women are getting sick, all at once, some of them even dying....
Fantasia 2025 Short Film, Short Review: BARLEBAS
Shot in lush and misty black & white, with superbly framed large-canvas photography, and truly exceptional production design, Malu Janssen’s Barlebas is a 20-minute short of a literal witch-hunt. One which perfectly balances the epic and the intimate, the tender and...
Fantasia 2025 Review: HI-FIVE, A Super Funny, Super Powered, Superhero Movie
Five strangers are the beneficiaries of organ transplants. More than a life-saving gift, each of them is unwittingly bestowed a superpower, dependent on which organ they received from this mysterious donor. On their roads to discovery, they learn that...
Fantasia 2025 Review: CHAO, Utterly Charming, Chaotic, And Often Hilarious Animated Fantasy Romance
Juno, a young journalist, fails to make the connection to an important assignment handed down to him by his editor. However, he may have stumbled upon a bigger scoop. Docked at the same harbor is a boat belonging to Stephen,...
Fantasia 2025 Review: FORBIDDEN CITY, Cooks Up Quality Kung Fu in Rome
This glossy Martial Arts extravaganza from Gabriele Mainetti (Freaks Out, They Call Me Jeeg Robot) is the real deal, and leading contender for action picture of the year. From its superb opening ‘bait and switch’ involving China’s One-Child policy, to...
Fantasia 2025 Review: THE VIRGIN OF THE QUARRY LAKE, Argentine Summer of Hell
In the early minutes of Laura Casabe’s sweltering horror-adjacent drama, The Virgin of The Quarry Lake, a homeless vagrant is nearly beaten to death in a middle-class neighbourhood. Bearing passing resemblance to the creature behind the Winkies in Mulholland Drive,...
Fantasia 2025: MOTHER OF FLIES Wins Cheval Noir For Best Film
I am currently on the train to Montreal to take up the final leg of Fantasia after Josh and Kurt have had their runs. So before my wi-fi either completely disappears or the motion sickness sets in I will make...
