Every year, the Fantasia festival is a highlight of the Montréal summer for me. I always try to attend and see as many films as I can (though I can never see as many as I want). The movies themselves are hit-or-miss – that’s to be expected for a festival that focuses on genre and fantasy – but they never fail to be at the very least entertaining, and the atmopshere in the cinema is consistently incredible (meow). I’ve been recording some brief impressions on the movies I get to see every year; find them all here .
I did not write about the movies I saw during the festival in 2023 – I was off social media! Here are some that I remember watching. Unfortunately Fantasia is absolutely awful at maintaining an archive of their past editions, so this is pieced together from various user lists on letterboxd, and doesn’t include short films.
Also, I technically did watch some things in 2024 as well, but none of them stuck with me.
✨ Certified Good stuff
Honeslty I don’t think this was incredible or anything, but it was just very fun and very charming!
That one was without a doubt the highlight of the festival for me. A cool as hell concept with amazing performances, structure and pacing.
A psychological, political, historical spy movie, and a huis-clos with Korean flair – a pretty gripping ride.
Exploration of gender identities and sexual awakenings on body-swap island. This was either amazing or awful – I only remember feeling lots of things!
Funnily this is the feature version of a short I watched during Fantasia 2019. A very slow, contemplative rom-com (or maybe a rom-sad).
Not so sure about these
It’s giving “TV screen in a Best Buy that has the Super Vivid mode on to make it as eye-catching as possible” – there is absolutely 0 substance here.
A duel between a murderer and a vengeful cop – except they swapped bodies. Pretty brutal. But I think the pace was really off.
Period thriller with a great concept – the only witness to the assassination of the prince is blind.
Witchy awakening and revenge psychedelia, well great!