Our 10 most anticipated films of the Fantasia Film Festival 2025 | Festivals and awards

The biggest genre films festival in the world, the Fantasia International Film Festival in Montreal, is one of the most exciting, not to mention a long time (it generally flows two, sometimes almost three weeks), parties during the calendar year. This is one of my favorites, despite (or perhaps because) the relative darkness of its catalog: this is where you can immerse yourself in a really bizarre shit, from science fiction to adult films limited to action comedies, thrillers, horror of all bands of the whole world.

More interesting, the festival will have one of its most prominent opening evening entries in its history: the controversy of the Ari Aster “Eddington” era, with Joaquin Phoenix and Pedro Pascal as a small sheriff of the city and the town hall candidate on a small town in Texas in the summer of 2020. Musical, settled on a new Rihanna song harvest.

The festival will also honor some Canadian lights this year: the Canadian Trailblazer Awards will give the filmmaker George Mihalka (“My Bloody Valentine”, “Hostile Takeover”) and “I heard the director of the Sirens”, Sheila McCarthy. The black horse Career Achievement Awards go to the pioneer of animation Genndy Tartakovsky (whose new film, “Fixed”, will close the festival) and the composer Danny Elfman (which will be present during a projection of “The Nightmare Before Christmas” by Henry Selick. Troma Pioneer Lloyd Kaufman will hang an independent price Independent, just in time for the world premiere of the new Troma documentary “Occupy Cannes”.

In addition to the many first in the midst of festival festivals titles, some of the most exciting retro projections include John Woo’s masterpiece “Bullet in the Head”, the 1974 Folk Folk Rock Opera “The Devil’s Bride!”, The 1970s giallo “House with the Laughing Windows”, James Brolin Starring in the 80s Flick “Night of the Juggler”, and more.

The 29th edition of this year takes place from July 17 to August 3, and we will be boots on the ground for a large part, giving you dispatches both in person and at a distance on some of our best choices from the list of festive robust titles. But in anticipation of this trip, here is a snapshot of some of the films that fascinate us the most.

Everything you need is to kill

Those of us who defend Tom Cruise and the Science Fiction thriller 2014 by Doug Liman “Edge of Tomorrow” know that his source material, the manga Hiroshi Sakurazaka “All You’s Need is to kill”, has the title of far superior. Fortunately, director Kenichiro Akimoto and the animation studio studio4 ° C rehabilitated the manga as a host, this time with a twist – making the story of extraterrestrial invasion in time achieved through the perspective of the secondary manga protagonist, Rita. He has a visual style breathtaking all his from the glimpses we saw, and I can’t wait to see what he looks like in motion.

Everything that moves

“All jacked up and full of verses” was a sexy and horrible pleasure in Fantasia 2022; Now, director Alex Phillips is back with a hot and funny turn on the erotic thriller, “everything that moves”. Shot in a beautifully filthy 16 mm, the film follows the sex worker and the bicycle mail Liam while he goes to his day, offering Doordash and a little elbow on the side. But his Randy routine is disturbed by the presence of a serial killer whose dangers are looming in the city of Chicago. We will also see roles of Porn Legends Ginger Lynn Allen and Nina Hartley, to add a shade of excited buffoonery.

Flamboyant fists

It would not be a fantasia without a notoriously prolific takashi miike, which has a huge three Entrances playing at the festival this year. But while the legal thriller “Sham” and Trippy J-Horror Anime Series “Nyaight of the Living Cat” also avoids our interest, my eye is on the drama of the “Blazing Fists” penance, which follows two young thugs that binds in prison and (after an inspiring batch of the real superstar of Mma Mikuru Asakura) Lot, fighting in a tarstar of the Margonal Arts. The great vibrations of live anime abound in this thing, according to certain reports, and I am always a suction cup for that.

Every heavy thing

The author based in Oklahoma, Mickey Reece, has long been a figure of fascination for me; His Pop-Country Lynchian Ode, “Country Gold”, was one of my most underestimated favorites this year. Now he is back in Fantasia with “Every Heavy Thing”, who follows an office worker (Joe Fadem) who witnesses a murder and takes place in a strange conspiracy involving a certain number of disappearances. But knowing that Reece, this simple synopsis of the intrigue denies a helping li-fi aesthetics, meditations on the fragmented nature of the American psyche and a dark and full-minded script. The Co-Stars “The People’s Joker” by Vera Drew, Barbara Crampton and John Ennis.

Fixed

Channel Tex Avery through “Big Mouth”, “fixed” of the legend of animation Genndy Tartakovsky will close the festival with the story of a pit bull which will soon be known by the name of Bull (Adam Devine) who, by learning his imminent fate, fled from his home before he was put to withdraw. Thus begins what promises to be a literal adventure with bullets while Bull does his best to keep his family jewelry – at least long enough to do it with the sexy poodle next door (Kathryn Hahn). We do not get enough torrid’s animated comedies (which are not, like “Foodtopia”), animated films much less 2D of any band; I can’t wait to see what Genndy has in store for us.

I am Frankelda

Guillermo del Toro Rodolfo and Arturo Ruiz’s protectors come to the festival with the first animated hitchhiking function in Mexico, “I am Frankelda”, an extension of the Cartoon Network / HBO Max Miniseries on the author of Phantom Frankelda and his enchanted book Herneval. The conceptions of the characters seem phenomenal (Shades of Del Toro “Pinocchio”), and the description of the festival promises a “world of oddity and wonder”. Anyway, hitchhiking animation is a treasure to see on the big screen, and I can’t wait to see how this know-how is going. (The puppets themselves will also be exhibited during an exhibition at the start of the party.)

I live here now

Julie Pacino channels David Lynch, Dario Argento, and the coens of her first feature film, “I Live Here Now”, a pulsating psychodrama (shot in 16 mm) about a young woman (Lucy Fry) trapped in a motel room and left to cope with her demons. The past and the present, reality and dreams all converge in what seems to be a nightmare gombo of generational trauma and the regular pressure of capitalism. Madeline Brewer Co-Stars, and it seems that it is the feeling film of summer (if Pacino removes her memory).

Lucid

Speaking of young women in Trippo, Deanna Milligan and the Fantasia Short by Ramsey Fendall in 2022 develops in the dark and psychedelic “lucid”. The film follows Mia Sunshine Jones (Caitlin Acken Taylor), an art student with an average sequence who feels the pressure of her art teacher demanding during her next major project. His solution? Like many artist before her, she will take drugs to draw inspiration. However, the medication of choice, an elixir named Lucid, can draw from something darker than she expects. Full of punk-art aesthetics and grunge vibrations from the 90s, as well as live music, “Lucid” gives the impression that it will be a crazy experience.

Terrestrial

From the director (curiously) of “Hot Time Machine” comes “Terresrial” by Steve Pink, a dark science fiction comedy on a young writer (“Sorry to disturb you” Jermaine Fowler) who experiences a sudden touch and invites his three best college friends to his new Manère to help him write his first book. As he mines his life for inspiration, the cracks of his self–mythology are beginning to train, and friends soon discover that they are more than they first negotiated.

The nuance

The podcasting meets the folk horror in the first feature film of the science fiction author Ian Tuason, who follows Evy (Nina Kiri) of “The Handmaid’s Tale”) as it investigates a series of disturbing audio files starring a mysterious man and his wife, connecting history to the dying mother of Evy. I am a big fan of the way Smart Horror can use audio media to sell fears (“archive 81”), so I am curious to know how the mixture of modern technology and the psychological religious torment of Tuason has in store for us.