The Montreal based Fantasia Festival is opening its portals to the strange, beguiling, and deliciously macabre. The festival plays between July 16 to August 3 and is a brilliant chance to see vital new talent, revisit old masters, and let your freak flag fly high.
Nadine Whitney chooses some not to be missed features as the curtain rises on the 29th edition.
THE MOTHER OF FLIES
Fantasia regulars know that the Adams family are not only Fantasia family, but they are also a reason to get very excited. With every new feature the filmmaking family collective announce (Toby Poser, John Adams, Zelda Adams, and Lulu Adams) there is a hum of anticipation that follows. The Mother of Flies a witchy new offering is no exception. A story of surviving illness and deep connections to the realms of life and death, The Mother of Flies is a fairytale come to being through the filmmaker’s intimate and distinctive style. Be the first to experience a new and haunting work by the makers of Hellbender and Where the Devil Roams.
THE BEARDED GIRL
If dark fairytales and coming-of-age stories mixed with the carnivalesque are on your radar as must-sees, then Jody Wilson’s The Bearded Girl is precisely calibrated for you. The story of Cleo (Anwen O’Driscoll) a sword-swallowing bearded woman who leaves her carney home for the wider world. Jessica Paré plays Cleo’s mother who is not well pleased that her daughter is seeking to individuate from her and the sheltered life she’s known. A tale of being on the outside and obviously so, that speaks to Wilson’s own experiences as an oddball non-conformist growing up in Canada.
A GRAND MOCKERY
Australia is more than kangaroos and serial killers as Adam C. Briggs and Sam Dixon prove with their 8mm fever dream of a young man losing grip on reality in Southern Queensland. Part mystery, part conspiracy thriller, part body horror, and one-hundred-percent phantasmagorical, there is nothing quite like A Grand Mockery in Australian cinema until now. Discomfiting and uncanny the film defies simple explanation and interpretation. Once you let A Grand Mockery into your mind you will be part of the nu-weird – Australian edition.
FIND YOUR FRIENDS
Izabel Pakzad’s debut feature upends the “girl’s trip” party dynamic and turns it into a survival thriller. With a stunning cast including the excellent Helena Howard of Madeline’s Madeline and I Saw the TV Glow, Bella Thorne (The Babysitter), Zión Moreno, Chole Cherry, and Sophia Ali, Pakzad reminds the audience just how close violence is for young women and how rapidly a good time can turn into a fight for your life.
DOG OF GOD
Latvian animation has the world’s attention after the amazing success of Flow. The wordless animation stunning with its melancholic animal adventures through a drowned world. Dog of God does involve an animal of sorts – a Holy Werewolf who captures the Devil’s balls which end up in a troubled 17th century village. There really isn’t any manner to adequately describe the religion vs. paganism fever dream except to imagine if monks who worked on Illuminated Manuscripts ate too much sourdough and got slight ergot poisoning and went mad with their marginalia. Dog of God is an animated trip!
More information can be found on the Fantasia website.