My third film on Day 3 of the festival was the Canadian Premiere of the thriller Come to Daddy, a co-production between New Zealand, Canada, and Ireland. The film had its World Premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival back in April. It played in several other festivals before landing in Montreal and it has upcoming screenings at the FrightFest in London, UK in August and at the Festival Internacional de Cinema Fantàstic de Catalunya in Sitges, Spain in October.
My second movie on Day 3 of the Fantasia International Film Festival was the Quebec Premiere of the South Korean crime thriller “Akinjeon” (literally “Villain Story”) aka The Gangster, the Cop, the Devil. The film opened in South Korean theaters on May 15th and was screened out of competition in the Midnight Screenings section at Cannes on May 22nd. It then played in a handful of US theaters in June.
My first of three films on Day 3 of the festival was a screening of the South Korean comedy/action film “Geukhanjikeob” aka Extreme Job. The movie came out in South Korean theaters back in January and quickly became a major box office success. At the time of writing this, the film is the second most viewed film in South Korean film history and the one that scored the better gross.
My second film of the evening on Day 2 was the North American Premiere of the science-fiction thriller Vivarium. It is a co-production between Ireland, Belgium, and Denmark. The film had its World Premiere at Cannes during the Critic’s Week back in May. The film is also setup to be the closing film of the Neuchâtel International Fantastic Film Festival in Switzerland on July 13th.
It’s Day 2 of the Fantasia International Film Festival and I started the evening with the Quebec Premiere of the Australian zombie comedy Little Monsters. It had its World Premiere at the Sundance Film Festival in their Midnight Program back in January. It then went on to play at SXSW and the Calgary Underground Film Festival. The film was written and directed by Abe Forsythe and stars Lupita Nyong’o, Alexander England, and Josh Gad.
Back for its 23rd edition, running from July 11th to August 1st, the Fantasia International Film Festival returns to Concordia University in downtown Montreal. To kick off my own 11th participation, I selected the Quebec Premiere of the US dark comedy The Art of Self-Defense. It was an advanced screening in a way because the film comes out on July 12th in the USA but only on July 19th in Canadian theaters. The Art of Self-Defense had its World Premiere at SXSW back in March to seemingly great reviews.
On Day 4 of the Fantasia Festival, I had one screening in the afternoon. This film tempted me very much after reading about it and watching the trailer. And it seems I was not the only one to be interested because it was the first of two sold out screenings (ed.: they’ve now added a third screening). A guy even offered me $40 for my ticket that I paid $9 for while I was waiting in the line to enter the theater! This was the Canadian Premiere of the Thai film Bad Genius (Chalard Games Goeng or Chalat Kem Kong, the latter of which is, apparently, the transliteration of it’s original title ฉลาดเกมส์โกง in Thai script).
Cinephellas 