The Fantasia International Film Festival will be celebrating its 24th edition as a virtual event accessible to movie lovers across Canada, with a wild assortment of scheduled screenings, panels, and workshops taking place online from August 20 through September 2, 2020. The decision to launch a digital edition of the famed genre festival was born from Fantasia's desire to keep the health and safety of its attendees a top priority during the current global health crisis, while still offering daring, much-needed new genre entertainment to residents of Canada and supporting the breakout filmmakers of the year.
The festival's full lineup will be announced in early August. In the meantime, Fantasia is excited to reveal a selected first wave of titles.
Makoto Tezuka adapts the legendary manga “Tezuka's Barbara”!
One night, a famous novelist encounters a young, seemingly homeless woman in an overpass tunnel. He brings her home, which sets him on a path of increasingly bizarre encounters. “Tezuka's Barbara” is the abrasively jazzy adaptation of Osamu Tezuka's adult manga of the same name. Directed by Makoto Tezuka (“Legend of Stardust Brothers“) and lensed by Christopher Doyle (“In the Mood for Love“, “Hero”), this film – released as part of Tezuka's 90th anniversary celebration – mixes pinku-style erotica with an examination of the creative impulse and a dash of the occult, thus unveiling the lesser-known dark side of the “Astro Boy” creator and anime maestro. North American Premiere
A Nightmare Odyssey of Ritual Magic: “Kriya”
In New Delhi filmmaker Sidharth Srinivasan's first horror work – and first narrative feature in a decade, following “Saul of Sand” – a DJ encounters a beautiful woman at a club, goes back to her home, and finds himself thrust into a nightmare odyssey of ritual magic, patriarchal death customs, and family conflict most unusual. Transgressive, darkly humorous, and mystically atmospheric, “Kriya”is a fever dream of fear starring Navjot Randhawa (“Mehsampur“), Noble Luke, and Avantika Akerkar (“The Second Best Exotic Mangold Hotel”), is co-produced by Andy Starke (“In Fabric”) and Pete Tombs (“Free Fire”), and features an unforgettable score by Jim Williams (“Possessor”). World Premiere
After “One Cut of the Dead” comes “Special Actors”
Kazuto is not your typical amateur thespian. His dreams have been spoiled by a special nervous condition that makes him faint at the slightest sign of stress! One day, upon his brother's serendipitous invitation, he joins a most peculiar agency, employing everyday actors to stage real-life situations! Being a stand-in at a wedding or a funeral is one thing… but soon enough, Kazuto must infiltrate a cult… and all hell breaks loose! Shinichiro Ueda (“One Cut of the Dead“) is back with his highly anticipated sophomore film “Special Actors”! A delirious meta-comedy, doubling down on the performative antics of his previous making-of/zom-com hybrid, Ueda now turns the entire world into a stage – to our utmost delight! Canadian Premiere
Along with the usual program, Fantasia introduces its “Camera Lucida”-section, “dedicated to boundary-pushing, auteur-driven works at the intersection of genre and arthouse cinema”. Among its titles are, for example Nobuhiko Obayashi's “Labyrinth of Cinema“
Description
On its closing night, a cinema is struck by lightning and a trio of young men are thrust beyond the screen, into the dying days of Japan's feudal era, the Boshin War, the Second Sino-Japanese War, the Battle of Okinawa, and the eve of the Hiroshima bombing. With the passing of director Nobuhiko Obayashi in April of 2020, cinema lost a titan. His final film, “Labyrinth of Cinema” (2019) is deeply humanist text: an endlessly delirious career coda and a voyage through Japan's wartime and cinematic history. It stands as a timely reminder of the power of movies to inspire in the face of hopeless barbarism. Canadian Premiere
