Quebec’s Fantasia Festival has unveiled the third and final wave of titles set to screen at this year’s 25th edition and announced that Takashi Miike’s (“13 Assassins,” “Ichi the Killer”) latest feature “The Great Yokai War – Guardians,” will close the festival. The world premiere of Julien Knafo’s Quebec zombie flic “Brain Freeze” will open the festival following an Aug. 4 pre-fest screening of James Gunn’s “The Suicide Squad.”
“The Great Yokai War- Guardians” is the follow-up to Fantasia 2006 opener “The Great Yoki War,” and unspools in a fantasy world of Japanese demons, kaiju and pop culture references which proved a hit in Montreal the first time around.
Other key titles featured in the third wave lineup include Lee Won-tae’s “The Devil’s Deal,” his first film since “The Gangster, The Cop, The Devil” won Sitges’ best film award in 2019. BAFTA-winner Paul Andrew Williams’ (“Murdered for Being Different”) “Bull,” a revenge thriller, will world premiere at this year’s Fantasia, along with “Coldwater” director Vincent Grashaw’s southern gothic thriller “What Josiah Saw.”
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Other world premieres include South African filmmaker Kelsey Egan’s debut “Glasshouse”; Rueben Martell’s Indigenous horror story “Don’t Say its Name”; immigrant coming-of-age drama “Baby, Don’t Cry” from Jesse Dvorak and written, designed, and starring Zita Bai; and Theodore Schaefer’s surreal road-trip film “Giving Birth to a Butterfly.”
This year’s Fantasia has placed a special emphasis on films from Japan and joining an already impressive lineup of films from the island is Masashi Ando and Masayuki Miyaji’s animated adventure “The Deer King,” produced by legendary Tokyo studio Production I.G (“Ghost in the Shell,” “Neon Genesis Evangelion”).
Fantasia International Film Festival 2021 runs Aug. 5-25 and will feature screenings, panels and workshops on its digital platform, hosted for the second year running by Festival Scope and Shift72. Event organizers are also closely monitoring the health and safety guidelines laid out by public officials in Montreal, in hopes that some in-person events can be added before the festival kicks off.
FANTASIA FESTIVAL THIRD WAVE TITLES
“Alien on Stage” (Lucy Harvey, Danielle Kummer, U.K.)
“Baby, Don’t Cry” (Jesse Dvorak, U.S.)
“Bull,” (Paul Andrew Williams, U.K.)
“Catch the Fair One” (Josef Kubota Wladyka, U.S.)
“Coming Home in the Dark” (James Ashcroft, New Zealand)
“Dear Hacker” (Alice Lenay, France)
“The Deep House” (Alexandre Bustillo, Julien Maury, France)
“The Deer King” (Masashi Ando, Masayuki Miyaji, Japan)
“The Devil’s Deal” (Lee Won-Tae, South Korea)
“Don’t Say Its Name” (Rueben Martell, Canada)
“The Feast” (Lee Haven Jones, U.K.)
“Fighter” (Jéro Yun, South Korea)
“Follow the Light” (Yoichi Narita, Japan)
“Frank & Zed” (Jesse Blanchard, U.S.)
“Giving Birth to a Butterfly” (Theodore Schaefer, U.S.)
“Glasshouse” (Kelsey Egan, South Africa)
“Grand Blue Dreaming” (Tsutomu Hanabusa, Japan)
“The Great Yokai War – Guardians” (Takashi Miike, Japan)
“Hand Rolled Cigarette” (Chan Kin-Long, Hong Kong)
“Ida Red” (John Swab, U.S.)
“Josee” (Kin Jeong-kwan, South Korea)
“Lost Boys” (Joonas Neuvonen, Sadri Centinkaya, Finland)
“Mad God” (Phil Tippett, U.S.)
“Midnight” (Kwon Oh-seung, South Korea)
“Midnight in a Perfect World” (Dodo Dayao, Philippines)
“The Night House” (David Bruckner, U.S.)
“On the 3rd Day” (Daniel de la Vega, Argentina)
“One Second Champion” (Chiu Sin-Hang, Hong Kong)
“Operation Luchador” (Alain Vézina, Candada)
“Polyu Styrene: I am a Cliché” (Celeste Bell, Paul Sng, U.K.)
“The Sadness” (Rob Jabbaz, Taiwan)
“Septet: The Story of Hong Kong” (Patrick Tam, Ringo Lam, Ann Hui, Johnnie To, Yuen Woo-ping, Tsui Hark, Sammo Hung, Hong Kong)
“Seobok” (Lee Young-joo, South Korea)
“Sweetie, You Won’t Believe It” (Yernar Nurgaliyev, Kazakhstan)
“Tokyo Revengers” (Tsutomu Hanabusa, Japan)
“Under the Open Sky” (Miwa Nishikawa, Japan)
“What Josiah Saw” (Vincent Garshaw, U.S.)
“When I Consume You” (Perry Blackshear, U.S.)
“Wild Men” (Thomas Daneskov, Denmark)
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