Most years I don’t particularly look forward to my birthday—yes, I’m one of THOSE people—but you can bet that every single summer I look forward to the Fantasia International Film Festival; one of the greatest film festivals on Planet Earth. Fantasia cobbles together a wide variety of genre films from all corners of the world and every corner of genre, spanning proud B-films of any genre to horror, science fiction, fantasy, and every iteration of them all in between. While a lot of film festivals have something for everybody, Fantasia has something for every fan of genre film, no matter where your taste lies. I’ve discovered several of my favourite films of all time at Fantasia, courtesy of the festival’s thoughtful, inclusive programming. Not to mention there are always exciting events throughout the festival, and whether it involves music, workshops, or conversations with artists, Fantasia finds a way to engage the cinematic mind of its participants and audiences alike.

There are too many films and events to list at once, so the following is a smörgåsbord of films and events that have been announced for Fantasia 2023 so far. Note: the short films are one of my absolute most anticipated parts of Fantasia each year, and their omission here is only due to the lineup/blocks not yet being announced. You’ll see PLENTY of capsule short film reviews throughout Fantasia alongside the full-form interviews and essays.

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Lovely, Dark, and Deep
Dir. Teresa Sutherland

Director-writer Teresa Sutherland (writer of 2018’s The Wind) brings Fantasia her feature film debut, Lovely, Dark, and Deep. Her new horror film draws on conspiracy theories, or rather highly-evidenced theories, about the extraordinary, unsettling number of people who go missing in America’s national parks. The story follows Lennon (played by Georgina Campbell), a backcountry ranger investigating a series of disappearances while she grapples with a similar trauma in her own past. Editor Alexandra Amick has described Lovely, Dark, and Deep as “slow burn, very weird, gross.” If we couple that description with an obviously isolated setting out in the forests of a national park and a plot involving disappeared people, Sutherland’s film sounds poised to give us a proper scare.

Empire V
Dir. Victor Ginzburg

Vampire horror films are a dime-a-dozen, which is why it’s always fun, and potentially good for the subgenre as a whole, when filmmakers attempt to do something a bit different with it. Empire V imagines a super elite race of vampires who survive not on blood but on Bablos, a powerful drug miked from humans in a horrific way. The film is set in contemporary Moscow and follows a man inducted into the super elite vampire race but, after ascending to a powerful status, begins to question what he’s been taught. Director Victor Ginzburg’s film is part Gothic romance, part satire of Russia’s elite, and sounds like a blast. Ginzburg is just one of the filmmakers at Fantasia 2023 bringing centuries-old Gothic figures into the current day.

Where the Devil Roams
Dir. John Adams / Zelda Adams / Toby Poser

The Adams Family (Toby Poser, John Adams, & Zelda Adams) have been making films outside of the conventional system a while now. They caught my eye when they brought us The Deeper You Dig, a haunting narrative about death, grief, and revenge. A couple years later, they delivered Hellbender, which uses witchcraft/a history of witches to tell a tale of a girl on the precipice of womanhood while her feminine power is being constrained by everyone around her. At 2023’s Fantasia Festival, the Adams Family return with Where The Devil Roams, a vision of Depression-era America and a murderous crew of sideshow performers dragging themselves across the dying carnival circuit. Judging by the previous films from this family of unique filmmakers and performers, their latest will find interesting, unsettling ways to get under audiences’ skins.

Blackout
Dir. Larry Fessenden

I interviewed Larry Fessenden several years ago following the premiere of his film Depraved, a 21st-century retelling of Mary Shelley’s groundbreaking, genre-birthing novel Frankenstein (read here), and Habit is one of the first horror films that opened my eyes to the power of contemporary Gothic fiction when I was a young film lover discovering exactly what I loved about cinema. And now, Fessenden has returned with yet another vision of the present, from out of the Gothic past, with Blackout, a werewolf film. There’s no doubt that Fessenden’s greatest influence has been the monsters of yesteryear, made so interesting by the way he updates and retells the stories of those monsters for new generations with new anxieties and fears for those monsters to embody.

What You Wish For
Dir. Nicholas Tomnay

Nicholas Tomnay’s What You Wish For promises uncanny thrills with a film about a chef (Nick Stahl) with gambling problems who tries escaping to a villa in Latin America, where he also takes up the identity of another man. Not much else to know about Tomnay’s film, however, this is the director’s second film, and his first was The Perfect Host (starring David Hyde Pierce), which was fantastic. Tomnay has built enough devilish goodwill with The Perfect Host to the point that What You Wish For‘s vague plot sounds rife for potentially wonderful genre film fuckery. Cannot wait.

The Sacrifice Game
Dir. Jenn Wexler

Several years ago, Jenn Wexler exploded onto the horror scene with 2018’s The Ranger, a punk rock slasher with a ton of soul. This year at Fantasia, Wexler delivers The Sacrifice Game. Her latest film is set in the 1970s at a Catholic boarding school and centres on Samantha (Madison Baines) and Clara (Georgia Acken), whose Christmas holiday stuck at school while everyone else is home turns into abject terror when a gang bent on murder shows up at the school’s doorstep. If Wexler’s punk rock energy in The Ranger was any indication, The Sacrifice Game, no matter if there’s any punk rock, is bound to be a hellish yet enjoyable ride.

Talk to Me
Dir. Danny & Michael Philippou

Danny and Michael Philippou are twin filmmakers originally from South Australia, who’ve gotten tons of recognition online from their YouTube channel, RackaRacka, specialising in crazy action/horror/comedy videos. The Philippou twins are now coming to Fantasia 2023 toting their debut feature film, Talk to Me. The film is about a young woman called Mia (played by Sophia Wilde) who winds up conjuring spirits from beyond the grave with the help of an embalmed hand. At first, Mia and her friends have fun with their ability to manipulate supernatural forces. And then it goes too far. Dead spirits? An embalmed hand? Seances? That’s the horror goodness right there. While the plot doesn’t sound as if it reinvents the wheel, the Philippous talents give hope that their take on old ideas will conjure up something new and frightening.

The Becomers
Dir. Zach Clark

The Becomers, from director Zach Clark, has the feel of a genre film that’s come along at the exact right time in history. Clark’s film is the tale of a body-snatching alien who arrives on our planet, reconnects with their partner, and tires to survive in contemporary America. It’s a mashup of comedy and science fiction that has the sense of being socially and politically aware. Perhaps it’s something entirely different. But in a day and age when 2SLGBTQ+ people, most specifically trans people, are consistently under attack by right-wing ideology, The Becomers has all the elements to be a smart, romantic, and weird commentary on what it means to be deemed Other in The United States of 2023.

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Meet the Artist: John Woo

Anybody who loves film should know John Woo, whether or not they love his style. He is a giant in the landscape of world cinema and has had influence on filmmakers across the globe in every genre. Woo’s filmography is stacked with plenty of great work; it wasn’t until 1986 that he released A Better Tomorrow, forever changing Hong Kong action cinema, as well as Hollywood, too. Woo has a generally extensive filmography with more than solely his brand of action filmmaking; part of why he’s been such a revolutionary force behind the camera for such a long period of time.
At Fantasia 2023, Meeting the Artist features a live talk with John Woo, promising to be a wonderful conversation with the legendary director. Apart from Meeting the Artist, Woo is also being celebrated by Fantasia with the Honorary Career Award for all his incredible cinematic work and an overall invaluable contribution to cinema as a whole.

Meeting with the Artist: Kier-La Janisse

Over the past 20(+) years, Kier-La Janisse has done consistent and groundbreaking work in the name of genre cinema. She founded the Miskatonic Institute for Fantasy Studies and was one of the original programmers of another wonderful festival, Fantastic Fest, not to mention her work on numerous other film festivals around the world. Janisse is also an author and her book House of Psychotic Women: An Autobiographical Topography of Female Neurosis in Horror and Exploitation Films (2012) is some of the greatest critical work on horror and exploitation films to date. Just a couple years ago, Janisse’s first documentary, Woodlands Dark and Days Bewitched: A History of Folk Horror, provided an extensive and endlessly fascinating look at folk horror from around the world through many critical perspectives. That’s a very brief overview of Janisse’s work; not quite doing her justice.

Meeting with the Artist is an event featuring a talk with Janisse, hosted by Bill Ackerman from the Supporting Characters podcast. Janisse is also being awarded the Canadian Pioneer Award for her work (as an author, a filmmaker, a historian, and a curator) in transforming how genre cinema is discussed and inspiring a new generation of artists.

Stop F*%#king Up the Planet:
Concrete Steps the Film Industry
Can Take to Reduce
Our Carbon & Waste Footprint

Maybe the most interesting and likewise important event at this year’s Fantasia Festival, Stop F*%#ing Up the Planet is focused on actual ways the film industry can genuinely reduce the waste it produces and the carbon it uses. One big complaint about the typically leftist push for better treatment of the environment is that there are never any concrete, workable ideas about how to accomplish it, especially when every industry is different. A focus on the film industry specifically here is a hopeful step towards more people within the industry taking climate change seriously. The fact is, the film industry, and the entertainment industry as a whole, is wasteful in a vast amount of ways. Many people in film describe themselves as progressive, so it’s time to start progressing. Maybe if there were more events like these at film festivals it might begin to produce a measurable change in the right directions.
Fingers crossed!

Speakers for the event include Dr. Heather Short, PhD Earth Sciences and Climate Science Educator; a representative of Rolling Green (“On tourne vert”), a program facilitating the adoption of eco-friendly measures for audiovisual productions in Québec; Adrian Knight, Location Manager and member of the Directors’ Guild of Canada’s National Sustainable Climate Action Committee; Elza Kephart (SLAXX), filmmaker and climate activist. More guests will eventually be announced.