The Fantasia International Film Festival will be celebrating its 27th edition with a whiplashing program of screenings, workshops, and launch events running from July 20 through August 9, 2023, taking place at the Concordia Hall Cinema, with additional screens at the Cinémathèque québécoise and Cinéma du Musée.

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Some highlights of the horror films this year!

FEAR RUNS LOVELY, DARK, AND DEEP

LOVELY, DARK AND DEEP is the hotly anticipated directorial debut of Teresa Sutherland, screenwriter of THE WIND and a writer on MIDNIGHT MASS. Laced with stunning visuals, this ominously beautiful, deeply frightening nightmare is anchored by a captivating lead performance from BARBARIAN’s Georgina Campbell. Campbell plays a park ranger in an isolated forest outpost, the site of multiple mysterious disappearances, and she is plagued by visions blending the past and present with something even more sinister. This transfixing film oozes an immersive, fever dream atmosphere. Also starring Nick Blood, Wai Ching Ho and Edgar Morais. World Premiere.

A SUPPRESSED AND SPECTACULAR REINVENTION OF VAMPIRE LORE: EMPIRE V

A disaffected student (Pavel Tabakov) follows an invitation to join “the elite” and finds himself forcibly transformed into a vampire, joining a supernatural ruling class who exercise an anonymous dictatorship over humans. Celebrated Russian-American director Victor Ginzburg (GENERATION P) demonstrates a striking visual imagination, perfectly complementing a story that reinvents nearly every aspect of vampire lore in clever and fantastical ways. This is the MATRIX of vampire cinema. Years in the making, EMPIRE V is both next-level blockbuster storytelling and megabudget anti-Oligarch satire, electrified with breathtaking visuals from the great Aleksei Rodionov (COME AND SEE). Co-starring Miron Fedorov, AKA rap star Oxxxymiron, whose anti-War benefit concerts led the Russian justice ministry to condemn him as a “foreign agent.” EMPIRE V itself has been banned by Russia’s Ministry of Culture, ensuring that the citizens of its home country may never see the film. World Premiere.

THE ADAMS FAMILY TAKE YOU WHERE THE DEVIL ROAMS

Darkest prayers will be answered, in sawdust and sacrilege, when Fantasia goes WHERE THE DEVIL ROAMS. This astonishing new feature from cult favourites The Adams Family (Toby Poster, John Adams, Zelda Adams), follows a family of travelling sideshow performers as they traverse Depression-era America on a bloody search for eternal life. As in THE DEEPER YOU DIG and HELLBENDER, both Fantasia World Premieres, the gifted filmmaking family’s latest creation continues their inspired explorations of familial power dynamics through the prism of horror. Haunting, poetic, sometimes funny, frequently freakish and told with conviction through a deeply personal lens. World Premiere.

LYCANTHROPIAN CHILLS FROM FROM LARRY FESSENDEN: BLACKOUT

At last, acclaimed horror auteur Larry Fessenden has fulfilled his long-held desire to make a werewolf film, rounding out the triptych begun with his vampire drama HABIT (1997) and FRANKENSTEIN variation DEPRAVED (2019). Fessenden, as always, makes BLACKOUT a very human story as well as a gripping horror show while weaving in his traditional focus on socio-political themes, from his long-held ecological concerns to very modern issues of suspicion and paranoia. Starring Alex Hurt, Addison Timlin, Marshall Bell, James LeGros, Barbara Crampton and Joe Swanberg. World Premiere.

OPENING THE FESTIVAL, PASCAL PLANTE WILL BRING US INTO RED ROOMS

Coming to christen Fantasia’s 27th edition days after its Karlovy-Vary competition debut, RED ROOMS (Les chambres rouges) is the haunting third feature from celebrated Quebec filmmaker Pascal Plante (FAKE TATTOOS, NADIA, BUTTERFLY). The high-profile case of serial killer Ludovic Chevalier (Maxwell McCabe-Lokos, STANLEYVILLE) has just gone to trial, and Kelly-Anne (Juliette Gariépy, BOOST) is obsessed. When reality blurs with her morbid fantasies, she goes down a dark path to seek the final piece of the case’s puzzle. Opening Film. North American Premiere.

NICOLAS CAGE. JOEL KINNAMAN. YUVAL ADLER. SYMPATHY FOR THE DEVIL.

Award-winning director Yuval Adler (BETHLEHEM) reunites with Joel Kinnaman following 2020’s THE SECRETS WE KEEP and brings Nicolas Cage on board to deliver one of the most intense performances of his career in SYMPATHY FOR THE DEVIL. After being forced to drive a mysterious passenger at gunpoint, a man finds himself in a high-stakes game of cat and mouse where nothing is as it seems. This riveting crime thriller will leave you breathless. International Premiere.

2023’s SCARIEST FILM IS COMING TO HAUNT CANADA: TALK TO ME

When a group of friends discover how to conjure spirits using an embalmed hand, they become hooked on the new thrill, until one of them goes too far and unleashes terrifying supernatural forces. An astonishing feature debut from Australian filmmakers Danny and Michael Philippou, TALK TO ME is an exhilarating roller coaster that balances imaginative scares with emotionally nuanced characters and an ingeniously original concept. It became an instant classic from the moment of its lauded Sundance premiere, and Fantasia couldn’t be prouder to host the film’s national debut. Stars Sophie Wilde, Alexandra Jensen and Miranda Otto. Canadian Premiere.

A TENSE UKRAINIAN SCREENLIFE THRILLER SHOT AGAINST THE RUSSIAN INVASION WILL COMPEL YOU TO STAY ONLINE

An urgent Ukrainian screenlife film that will have your heart in your throat, shot against the actual Russian invasion, STAY ONLINE is the gripping feature debut from Eva Strelnikova. Katya (Liza Zaitseva), a volunteer from Kyiv fighting against the invasion of Ukraine, uses a laptop donated to the resistance and comes into contact with the young son of the computer’s original owner, who is desperately in search of his missing parents. Her attempts to help the child will see her risk all she holds dear. Being the festival where screenlife storytelling was first introduced to audiences with Unfriended in 2014, Fantasia is especially proud to be World Premiering this landmark film, an intimately human thriller about war, made in war. World Premiere.

DECADES IN THE MAKING, THE PRIMEVALS WILL SOON LIVE

Fantasia’s world premiere of THE PRIMEVALS represents the culmination of a longtime dream harboured by visual effects wizard David Allen, whose career stretched from 1970’s EQUINOX through Oscar-nominated work on YOUNG SHERLOCK HOLMES, WILLOW and beyond. Allen first conceived THE PRIMEVALS as a vehicle for his stop-motion talents in the 1970s and finally began directing the film in the 1990s under producer and Full Moon Features Founder Charles Band, for whom he’d brought all manner of beasties to life. Sadly, the film’s completion was scuttled by Allen’s death from cancer in 1999 at just 54 years old. For the last many years, Band and longtime Allen associate Chris Endicott (THE AVENGERS: INFINITY WAR) have worked to see the film to completion, and it emerges at Fantasia as a glorious tribute to the classic films of Ray Harryhausen, with a true sense of adventure and eye-popping stop-motion animation. Special-effects fans will not want to miss this. World Premiere.

T BLOCKERS PROVES WHY YOU DON’T MESS WITH QUEER FILMMAKERS

Though just eighteen years old, Alice Maio Mackay (SO VAM) is a fearless heir to the Queer Horror Canon. T BLOCKERS, her third feature, is an unapologetically trans homage to INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS brimming with youthful energy and a punk attitude. Equal parts gross-out comic horror and heartwarming coming of age, T BLOCKERS is about a young trans filmmaker obsessed with a thought-to-be long-lost film and the spread of a violent infectious parasite. Mackay channels Gregg Araki and John Waters in this playful and defiant sci-fi horror. Canadian Premiere.

JOE LYNCH TRIBUTES STUART GORDON WITH LOVECRAFT ADAPTATION SUITABLE FLESH

A psychiatrist falls into a downward spiral of sex, possession, and death when a young patient shows up at her door with symptoms that are of another world. Heather Graham and Judah Lewis star in Joe Lynch’s loving tribute to the late Stuart Gordon that reunites actress Barbara Crampton, Screenwriter Denis Paoli, and Executive Producer Brian Yuzna to forge a macabre supernatural erotic horror film straight from the depths of the abyss. Adapted from H.P. Lovecraft’s THE THING ON THE DOORSTEP. Official Selection: Tribeca Film Festival 2023. Canadian Premiere.

DIVINITY (USA) – Dir. Eddie Alcazar

In a barren future wasteland, two cosmic brothers abduct a mad pharmaceutical mogul on a quest for immortality. A face-meltingly stylized sci-fi mind trip produced by Steven Soderbergh, starring Scott Bakula, Stephen Dorff and Bella Thorne. Official Selection: Sundance 2023. Canadian Premiere.

IN MY MOTHER’S SKIN (Philippines, Singapore, Taiwan) – Dir. Kenneth Dagatan

In the final, dire days of the Second World War, the young Tala discovers something otherworldly in the woods. A Filipino folk-horror fairy tale set in a time of perfidy, dread, and desolation. Official Selection: Sundance 2023. Canadian Premiere.

LATE NIGHT WITH THE DEVIL (Australia) – Dirs: Colin and Cameron Cairnes

A career-best performance by David Dastmalchian headlines this innovative and nightmarish horror treat in which a live television broadcast in 1977 goes horribly wrong, unleashing evil into the nation's living rooms. Accurately hailed by Stephen King as “absolutely brilliant”. Official Selection: SXSW 2023. Overlook 2023. Canadian Premiere.

OFFICIAL CLOSING FILM: RKSS COMES HOME WITH WE ARE ZOMBIES

The 27th edition of the festival will end on an especially riotous note with the World Premiere of WE ARE ZOMBIES, the latest from internationally beloved Quebecois cult collective RKSS (SUMMER OF ’84) - François Simard, Anouk Whissell, and Yoann-Karl Whissell. Based on the comic LES ZOMBIES QUI ONT MANGÉ LE MONDE (The Zombies that Ate the World), the film is set in a society where zombies, referred to as “living-impaired,” roam among us with no urge to eat flesh. The film stars Megan Peta Hill (RIVERDALE), Alexandre Nachi (1991) and Derek Johns (THE BOYS). Also on board is RKSS mainstay Jean-Philippe Bernier, handling both the cinematography and the pulsing electro soundtrack with his duo Le Matos.

RKSS came of age at Fantasia, first in our audience and then on our screen with their early short films becoming instant crowd favourites. Their debut TURBO KID emerged from Frontières, premiered at Sundance and quickly attained rabid cult status across the world. Nothing makes us prouder than to close our 27th edition with the world premiere of their third feature, a special homecoming with RKSS returning to their earliest audience. World Premiere.

A TENSE REVENGE THRILLER RE-INTERPRETATION: FEMME

Performing as Aphrodite Banks, Jules (Nathan Stewart-Jarrett, CANDYMAN) has become one of London’s most celebrated drag artists. After a show, he steps out to get some cigarettes when he is brutally attacked by a gang of racist homophobes. Jules withdraws from the drag race entirely, traumatised and despondent. Months later, while at a gay sauna, he recognizes a familiar face: his attacker Preston (George MacKay, 1917), whom he starts dating, hatching a plan for revenge. Sam H. Freeman and Ng Choon Ping’s debut FEMME is a jaw-dropping thriller built around the notion of code-switching along sexual orientation, but also racial and ideological lines. A perfectly calibrated queer thriller, it subverts the tired trauma narrative and instead focuses on drag as a powerful force. Cheval Noir Competition. North American Premiere.

BOOGER WILL HAVE YOU COUGHING UP MORE THAN JUST FURBALLS

Mary Dauterman's short film, WAKEY WAKEY took Fantasia by storm when it internationally premiered in the Born of Woman showcase in 2019. She's now back with her feature debut BOOGER, a dark comedy about lost cats, grief, and millennial despair. Anna's (Grace Glowicki) best friend Izzy just died, and her landlord won't stop calling about rent. As her life falls apart, she's bitten by Izzy's cat Booger and starts to get stranger every day: she's hungry for canned fish, she keeps swallowing her hair, and her predator instincts are out of control. World Premiere.

BETTER THE DEVIL YOU KNOW THAN THE DEVILS YOU DON’T

Motivated by anger and revenge, homicide detective Jae-hwan is hellbent on taking down a dangerous serial killer named Jin-hyuk. During a frenzied chase, Jae-hwan finally captures the perpetrator but a disastrous accident sends him to the hospital. Upon waking, Jae-hwan finds something is terribly off: he now looks and sounds like Jin-hyuk Director Kim Jae-hoon makes his feature debut with the FACE/OFF-inspired body-swap thriller DEVILS: an over-the-top, thoroughly entertaining thrill ride starring Oh Dae-hwan (DELIVER US FROM EVIL) opposite Jang Dong-yoon (PROJECT WOLF HUNTING) in a gory, cinematic showdown for the ages. North American Premiere.

A HALLUCINATORY VISION OF HELL: PANDEMONIUM

Winner of Fantasia’s 2016 Jury Prize for Best International Short for A NEARLY PERFECT BLUE SKY, celebrated writer/director Quarxx returns to the festival with the stunning new feature PANDEMONIUM. Drawing on themes found in Dante’s Inferno and Milton’s Paradise Lost, the film is a multi-textured existential fantasy topped with signature notes of visceral horror, disturbing fairy tale, wry comedy, and thrills. Exploring the many faces of death — suicide, murder, illness, accident — Quarxx dives deep into the notion of sin without redemption and the frailty of the human condition through the waking nightmare of one confused traveler (Hugo Dillon) who refuses to abandon all hope as he enters the gates of hell. North American Premiere.

VINEGAR SYNDROME’S DEBUT PRODUCTION MELTS RETINAS WITH EIGHT EYES

At the breaking point of their dysfunctional marriage, Cass (Emily Sweet) and Gav (Brad Thomas) take a trip through Serbia. After meeting a mysterious local, Saint Peter (Bruno Veljanovski), who eagerly offers to be their guide, the couple embark on an impromptu sightseeing expedition that soon takes a series of sinister turns. The inaugural production from beloved restoration label Vinegar Syndrome, co-produced with the team behind Shudder's The Last Drive-In with Joe Bob Briggs Not the Funeral Home, shot on location in 16mm with mind-bending cinematography, EIGHT EYES shocks hard. Director / co-writer Austin Jennings’ feature debut channels the spirits of exploitation cinema’s past to construct a film that is as ghoulish as it is captivating. Featuring an original score by Morricone Youth. World Premiere.

AKIRA TORIYAMA’S MANGA SAND LAND RETURNS AS AN ANIME FEATURE FILM

Best known for the world-renowned DRAGONBALL, celebrated Japanese manga creator Akira Toriyama’s many other works include the mini-epic SAND LAND, a demon-infested, post-apocalyptic screwball romp published in 2000. It portrayed a mysterious desert world where water is the most precious resource, and follows Satan’s son Beelzebub and his comrades on a desperate, dangerous quest. Toriyama’s countless fans can rejoice because now, a quarter century later, an anime adaptation has further rekindled SAND LAND’s appeal. Fantasia’s crowd can take particular pleasure in this news, because the director is the talented Toshihisa Yokoshima, a deft master of CG animation whose short film COCOLORS won a Satoshi Kon Award at the festival in 2017. Axis Section. Canadian Premiere.

The call is coming from inside the house in HOME INVASION

“Made in bed during the pandemic” by playful experimentalist Graeme Arnfield, HOME INVASION is one of the most chilling cinematic experiences of the year. A nightmarish essay film doubling as an experiential horror film framed through an oppressive peephole, this genre-defying documentary takes the viewer from the invention of the doorbell to the arrival of Amazon’s ghoulish Ring, showing how this history intertwines with film technology, horror cinema and labour struggles. Composed from a mix of archival patent illustrations, domestic security footage and classic film clips from Hitchcock to Haneke, HOME INVASION asks what happens when our homes and dreams have been invaded. Official Selection: Berlinale 2023. Camera Lucida Section. North American Premiere.

SATAN WANTS YOU explores the truth about Satanic Panic through “Michelle Remembers”

In 1980, a book entitled Michelle Remembers rocked pop culture. Written by Michelle Smith and her psychiatrist Larry Pazder, this account reveals Michelle’s suppressed memories of satanic ritual abuse at the hands of her parents. In SATAN WANTS YOU, which debuted at SXSW 2023, directors Sean Horlor and Steve J. Adams interview key witnesses of Michelle’s ordeal to delve into the reasons why this book is seen as the catalyst for the Satanic Panic phenomenon. Our screening will include a special Q&A with Fantasia’s 2022 Canadian Trailblazer award winner, Kier-La Janisse in conversation with the filmmakers. Her book Satanic Panic: Pop-Culture Paranoia in the 1980s will also be available. Septentrion Shadows Section. Quebec Premiere.