‘Eddington’ To Open The 2025 Fantasia International Film Festival
Summer is (almost officially) here! That means the Fantasia International Film Festival is inching ever closer. This year, the festival, which was recently included on Dread Central’s best film festivals on earth, will celebrate its upcoming 29th edition from July 16 through August 3, 2025, and today, we’re excited to share the second wave of titles coming to this year’s festival, as well as the recipient of their Canadian Trailblazer Award.
First, the festival opens with Ari Aster’s latest feature film, Eddington, which our Managing Editor, Josh Korngut, gave five stars out of Cannes. The film begins in May of 2020 when a standoff between a small-town sheriff (Joaquin Phoenix) and mayor (Pedro Pascal) sparks a powder keg as neighbor is pitted against neighbor in Eddington, New Mexico.
CANADIAN TRALBLAZER AWARD: GEORGE MIHALKA
Fantasia will honor filmmaker George Mihalka with a 2025 Canadian Trailblazer award. Mihkala’s 40-year career in cinema and television has crossed cultures and borders. Internationally, he’s most celebrated for his 1981 slasher classic My Bloody Valentine, the Genie-nominated Eternal Evil (1985), Hostile Takeovers (1988), Bullet to Beijing (1996), and Watchtower (2001). In Quebec, Mihalka has made some of French Canada’s most beloved cult films, including Scandale (1982), La Florida (1993), L’Homme Ideal (1996), and Les Boys IV (2005).
Mihalka’s history in filmmaking is as unconventional as it is exciting. He’ll also be giving a master class at the festival, presented by the Directors Guild of Canada (DGC).
Check out the rest of the second wave titles for Fantasia 2025 below:
NYAIGHT OF THE LIVING CAT (dir. Tomohiro Kamitani)
World Premiere
Takashi Miike makes his mark at Fantasia again this year with not one but three titles—including an adorable J-horror anime series, with World Premiere episodes! Adapting the manga written by Hawkman and drawn by Mecha-Roots, and debuting on Crunchyroll this summer, NYAIGHT OF THE LIVING CAT presents a premise more terrifying than a half-empty food bowl—a virus sweeping the globe, causing anyone who touches a kitty to become one themselves! Executive director Miike and director Tomohiro Kamitani deliver a furry, purring parody of the natural-horror subgenre, an animated cataclysm of cuteness!
BLAZING FISTS and SHAM (dir. Takashi Miike)
Canadian Premieres
The pair of Miike films celebrating their Canadian Premieres pack a one-two punch, starting with BLAZING FISTS, in which two teenage hoodlums aim for better lives for themselves, and fighting in the ring is how they’ll get there. A convincing coming-of-age drama with a big heart to balance out the bruises and black eyes, its cast features J-pop superstar Gackt and MMA fighter Mikuru Asakura, who appears as himself. SHAM, inspired by a true story, follows the surreal legal and media battle of a teacher falsely accused of violence against a student. Miike delivers a breathtaking legal thriller that generates as much anxiety as his best horrific works, thanks in part to the crackling performance by Go Ayano (GANTZ).
FIND YOUR FRIENDS (dir. Izabel Pakzad)
World Premiere
For her first feature, director Izabel Pakzad puts a sinister spin on party culture and the constant threat of violence facing young women, featuring a stellar cast including Helena Howard (MADELINE’S MADELINE, I SAW THE TV GLOW), Bella Thorne (DIVINITY), Zión Moreno (GOSSIP GIRL), Chloe Cherry (EUPHORIA), and Sophia Ali (UNCHARTED). Set against cinematic desert scenery, what starts as a wild girls’ trip quickly turns dangerous when the locals don’t want them there. As the hostile environment escalates, Amber’s friends uncover her past trauma and become fed up with the toxic dynamics. Little do they know, their fun trip will transform into one of revenge—building to a jaw-dropping finale that audiences will never forget.
KAZAKH SCARY TALES (dir. Adilkhan Yerzhanov)
World Premiere
Multi-time award-winner Adilkhan Yerzhanov (STEPPENWOLF, THE OWNERS, THE GENTLE INDIFFERENCE OF THE WORLD) has turned his visionary lens towards skin-crawling occult horror storytelling. A cop (Kuantai Abdimadi, MOUNTAIN ONION) ventures into a remote village to investigate a gruesome series of inexplicable events and soon finds himself in the center of an otherworldly storm of local witchcraft and death. It becomes clear that the curse of Albasty, a spirit said to devour infants, is horrifyingly real. Bringing nightmarish regional folk horror to the screen through a tense, neo-Noir Trojan horse, KAZAKH SCARY TALES was produced as an anthology series for a domestic streamer but was deemed too frightening by focus groups. Fantasia will be presenting the first three episodes as a complete feature narrative, the first time that anything from the series will be shown anywhere in the world.
DEATH DOES NOT EXIST (dir. Félix Dufour-Laperrière)
North American Premiere
A group of young activists takes up arms against an affluent family, hoping to plant the seed that sows a rebellion. But when things don’t go according to plan, a woman finds herself haunted by the memory of her friend, intertwined with the shadows of her doubt and guilt. In a world threatened by growing inequalities, Félix’s masterpiece embraces the naiveté of youth to tell its story, weighing the burden of one’s responsibilities and the consequences of repercussions of the path they’ve taken.
NEW GROUP (dir. Yuta Shimotsu)
North American Premiere
High school student Ai (Anna Yamada) sees her world collapse when a strange cult-like mentality gradually turns people around her into mindless followers who can transform simple gymnastics routines into a nightmarish dance of death. With only his second feature, co-writer and director Yuta Shimotsu (BEST WISHES TO ALL, produced by Takashi Shimizu) delivers one of the most well-scripted, masterfully directed, and incredibly creepy J-horror films of the last twenty years.
EVERY HEAVY THING (dir. Mickey Reece)
World Premiere
Set against the unsettling backdrop of a string of disappearances, the film follows Joe (Josh Fadem, BETTER CALL SAUL), an unassuming office worker at an online periodical who becomes entangled in a conspiracy after witnessing a murder. As a colleague begins to investigate, Joe struggles to conceal the truth as his carefully constructed life falls apart. The eclectic cast includes Vera Drew (THE PEOPLE’S JOKER), Tipper Newton (THE MINDY PROJECT), John Ennis (RATS!), and genre icon Barbara Crampton (RE-ANIMATOR).
TAMALA 2030: A PUNK CAT IN DARK (dir. t.o.L)
World Premiere
With TAMALA 2030: A PUNK CAT IN DARK, the mysterious Japanese writer/composer/director duo K. and kuno, known together as t.o.L (“trees of Life”), have resumed, recalibrated, and resolved their tale of the cutest girl-cat in dystopian Cat Tokyo, surpassing themselves in their control of the cryptic, complex, and cuddly chaos they’ve unleashed.
FOREIGNER (dir. Ava Maria Safai)
World Premiere
It’s 2004, and Iranian immigrant Yasamin, or Yasi, is the new girl. Her high school experience is daunting, as she tries to improve her English by watching her favorite sitcom and befriends a trio of pastel-clad girls who feed Yasi’s need to fit in. Desperate for acceptance, she dyes her hair blonde and, in doing so, also attracts a demonic force.
BLANK CANVAS: MY SO-CALLED ARTIST LIFE (dir. Kazuaki Seki)
North American Premiere
A young woman who dreams of becoming a manga artist enters an art school where her mentor uses harsh methods to push his students into classical painting. Fearful about her tenacious teacher’s reaction toward her secret passion, she will learn to keep her ground and find her place.
BUFFET INFINITY (dir. Simon Glassman)
World Premiere
Picking from hundreds of hours of original, low-budget TV ads, First-time feature director and award-winning comedian Simon Glassman tells the sinister tale of two restaurants battling it out in the town of Westridge County. Insurance ads, used car rivals, and plugs for a local religious scholar and recording artist, Langdon P. Hershey, all converge to tell the story of an expanding sinkhole, a cult, and an ever-growing restaurant that becomes unsettlingly sentient.
CARDBOARD CITY (dirs. Jean-Marc E. Roy and André Forcier)
World Premiere
In Longueuil, a poet (Jean-Marc Desgent) stubbornly refuses to sell his house to a predatory, if not slightly unhinged, real estate developer (Pierre Curzi, THE DECLINE OF THE AMERICAN EMPIRE). But the fight isn’t new: In 1969, Longueuil absorbed the much larger, and poorer, city of Jacques-Cartier, where many people had constructed their homes with the materials available to them. Standing strong against the threat to his neighborhood, Desgent tells the stories of these women and men who built his city. In CARDBOARD CITY (VILLE JACQUES CARTON), Jean-Marc E. Roy (BLEU TONNERRE, CRÈME DE MENTHE) and André Forcier (ABABOUINÉ, AU CLAIR DE LA LUNE) join forces to create an oddball film where reality and fiction blend on a backdrop of poetry.
THE GIRL WHO STOLE TIME (dirs. Yu Ao and Zhou Tienan)
North American PremiereInspired by their own experience with sudden loss, writer-directors Yu Ao and Zhou Tienan created THE GIRL WHO STOLE TIME as a heartfelt response to impermanence. Qian Xiao, a cheerful girl from a fishing village, obtains a mysterious pendant, the Time Dial, which gives her the power to control time. But her new ability attracts danger, including Seventeen, a cold-faced assassin. When their paths collide, a surprising adventure begins.
LUCID (dirs. Deanna Milligan and Ramsey Fendall)
World Premiere
After coming to Fantasia as a short film selected for the Frontierés Market Shorts to Features Lab in 2022, directing duo Deanna Milligan and Ramsey Fendall expand the world of Mia Sunshine Jones in their darkly trippy feature, LUCID. Mia is a rebellious art student who struggles to create the ultimate project for a demanding professor. Desperate to find her artistic voice, she takes Lucid, a candy elixir, to access her creativity, but taps into something much darker.
JULIET & THE KING (dir. Ashkan Ragozar)
International Premiere
Complications abound for a lovestruck monarch, a Parisian actress, and her playwright pal bringing Shakespeare to the Persian stage in the charming, animated musical comedy JULIET & THE KING. Following the bloody, mythic fantasy THE LAST FICTION (2018), the second feature film from Iranian animator Ashkan Ragozar and his team at Hoorakhsh Studio is something lighter and brighter. It’s a lively historical flight of fancy about Nasser-al-Din Shah, Iran’s first ruler to visit Europe, in 1873, saluting his open mind and appetite for the arts, though Ragozar doesn’t spare him bouts of cartoon buffoonery.
OLD GUYS IN BED (dir. Jean-Pierre “JP” Bergeron)
World Premiere
OLD GUYS IN BED tells the story of Paul (Duff MacDonald), a 60-year-old film historian, who meets a man (Paul James Saunders) on a dating website. Unfamiliar with these new ways of making connections, he discovers a world that is both promising and confusing, one that will serve as his gateway through a modern and unpredictable journey of love.
ADDITIONAL SECOND WAVE TITLES
DOG OF GOD (Latvia) – dirs. Raitis Ābele and Lauris Ābele
Canadian Premiere
Dire omens and sexual perversions, clerical fanaticism and collective madness—the diabolical dark fantasy DOG OF GOD is an eerie, animated folk chiller from the Baltic region in which malevolent moments and sinister sights abound. The black humor that Baltic artists wield so boldly is as much a constant presence as the creeping sense of dread.
DUI SHAW (Bangladesh) – dir. Nuhash Humayun
Canadian Premiere
Following 2023’s folk-horror anthology PETT KATA SHAW, four new fearful fables from the leading light of genre film in Bangladesh, this time redirecting focus towards social ills plaguing South Asia. Each of DUI SHAW’s segments is strikingly distinct in theme and tone, ranging from gritty and gruesome to haunting, hilarious, mythic, and magically musical.
JAPANESE AVANT-GARDE PIONEERS (France) – dir. Amélie Ravalec
Canadian Premiere
The harrowing ghastliness of butoh dance, the freak-show surrealism of angura theatre, shockingly raw photography, and confounding-yet-dazzling psychedelic poster design—a dive into the twisted shadows writhing under the rising sun in the 1960s, charting an underground art movement that still echoes hauntingly today.
LIFEHACK (UK) – dir. Ronan Corrigan
Canadian Premiere
Ronan Corrigan’s thrilling debut feature is a bold new entry into the Screenlife genre. After scamming the daughter (Jessica Reynolds) of a ruthless crypto millionaire, a group of digital troublemakers (Georgie Farmer, Yasmin Finney, Roman Hayeck-Green, and James Scholz) find themselves entangled in a heist for their lives. Produced by Timur Bekmambetov (SEARCHING).
LURKER (USA) – dir. Alex Russell
Canadian Premiere
When a twenty-something retail clerk (Théodore Pellerin, NINO) encounters a rising pop star (Archie Madekwe, SALTBURN), he takes the opportunity to edge his way into the in-crowd. But as the line between friend and fan blurs beyond recognition, access and proximity become a matter of life and death. A stunning feature debut, at once unsettling and entertaining, tense and captivating, LURKER is a brilliant deconstruction of fame and need in Instagram-driven times.
NOISE (South Korea) – dir. Kim Soo-jin
Canadian Premiere
After the disappearance of her younger sister, a woman with a hearing impairment experiences bizarre happenings and frightening encounters when mysterious noises echo throughout the building. With brilliant sound design and perfectly-dosed jump scares, first-time director Kim Soo-jin blends real-life anxieties with stark, supernatural elements to create genuine tension that never lets go.
REFLECTION IN A DEAD DIAMOND (Belgium-France) – dirs. Hélène Cattet and Bruno Forzani
Canadian Premiere
Award-winning mad geniuses of radical genre storytelling, Hélène Cattet and Bruno Forzani (AMER, LET THE CORPSES TAN) have created an electrifying ode to ‘60s Euro-spy films, telling the tale of a retired agent (Italian screen legend Fabio Testi) plagued with suspicions that past enemies are finally coming for him. An astonishing act of volcanically imaginative filmmaking that stands at the very top of an unwaveringly brilliant filmography, the thriller features Yannick Renier (CARNIVORE), Koen De Bouw (DOSSIER K.), Maria de Medeiros (PULP FICTION), and the incredible dancer and choreographer Thi Mai Nguyen.
THE SCHOOL DUEL (USA) – dir. Todd Wiseman Jr.
Canadian Premiere
In a near-future “Free State of Florida,” gun control is outlawed, and school shootings are at an all-time high. When an opportunity for notoriety arises, a tormented 13-year-old (Kue Lawrence, MARSHMALLOW) enlists in a controversial and deadly state-sponsored competition. A heartbreaking vision of the future, it co-stars Christina Brucato (THE MENU) and Oscar Nuñez (THE OFFICE).
THE SERPENT’S SKIN (Australia) – dir. Alice Maio Mackay
Canadian Premiere
Fantasia alumni Alice Maio Mackay (T-BLOCKERS, CARNAGE FOR CHRISTMAS) returns to the festival with her sixth feature THE SERPENT’S SKIN, a supernatural romance that follows Anna, a young woman who leaves her transphobic small town, and develops a romance with a tattoo artist with whom she shares a supernatural connection. After accidentally unleashing a demon, they must work together to defeat the evil that’s killing their friends. A colorful but tender exploration of love, gender identity, and personal growth.
TOGETHER (USA) – dir. Michael Shanks
Canadian Premiere
Years into their relationship, Tim and Millie (Dave Franco and Alison Brie) find themselves at a crossroads as they move to the country, abandoning all that is familiar in their lives except each other. With tensions already flaring, a nightmarish encounter with a mysterious, unnatural force threatens to corrupt their lives, their love, and their flesh. A smart, shocking marriage of body horror and troubled-relationship study.
TRANSCENDING DIMENSIONS (Japan) – dir. Toshiaki Toyoda
Canadian Premiere
A nihilistic hitman in search of a missing monk confronts a sadistic sorcerer in this potent blend of film noir, sci-fi, supernatural combat, deadpan comedy, and existential weirdness. A gleefully offbeat brain-twister peppered with mysticism and mayhem from the director of BLUE SPRING and 9 SOULS.
THE WAILING (Spain) – dir. Pedro Martín-Calero
Canadian Premiere
Several generations of women, separated by time and space, are stalked by the same terrifying curse. One of the scariest films of the last year, vibrantly told in a multi-chapter structure, taking place in Spain and Argentina across periods decades apart, showcasing a trio of striking lead performances from Ester Expósito (VENUS), Mathilde Ollivier (OVERLORD), and Malena Villa (EL ANGEL).
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