Fantasia International Film Festival

- ANY FURTHER QUESTIONS?

Please check our FAQ: https://fantasiafestival.com/en/submissions/submissions-faq
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- WHO ARE WE?

Fantasia is a legendary 18-day blow-out of worldwide fantastic cinema taking place each July in the heart of Montreal. An event hell-bent on showcasing the most exciting, innovative and individualistic examples of contemporary international genre cinema from every corner of the globe.
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- WHAT WE ARE LOOKING FOR?

While predominantly a fantasy/action/horror festival, Fantasia has always embraced works whose sheer individuality puts them in a genre of their own. We’ve showcased everything from captivating dramas, eccentric comedies, provocative documentaries, mind-blowing experimental works, even atypical children’s films.

We encourage filmmakers of all backgrounds and obsessions to submit their work. Films coming from underrepresented horizons are always of interest.

Explore our previous lineups to get a sense of our programming. We’re pretty broad-minded!
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- TESTIMONIALS :

“Fantasia is the most important and prestigious genre film festival on this continent.” — Quentin Tarantino

“Fantasia is a shrine” — Guillermo del Toro

“Fantasia remains to this day one of my very favorite film festivals in the world.” — James Gunn

“I promise to make more genre films just so I can get invited back.” — Edgar Wright

"Fantasia has some of the best audiences and programming out there. As a distributor, it's an essential stop for the latest in genre cinema." — MAGNOLIA PICTURES

"One of the most exciting genre film festivals in the world. It is in Montreal that we might discover the next Eraserhead" — PREMIERE MAGAZINE

"One of Canada's hotter film events" — VARIETY

"Mammoth...The world's largest genre film festival" — INDIEWIRE

"Now in its 28th year, Fantasia International Film Festival is North America’s whoppingest genre festival, a continental pace-setter whose three-week sprawl and seemingly boundless cinematic variety are hard to come by anywhere else. No other festival can match its freak. Or, for that matter, its fan-driven, cinephile-stoking ethos, something that is so often overshadowed by the corporate presence that invades many of the more elite showcases around the world. The fest brings together some of the planet’s rowdiest audiences with a parade of global auteurs, underground troublemakers, and indie breakouts – almost all of whom wind up at a downtown Irish bar after hours. It’s hard to beat.” — Steve Dollar, FILM THREAT

"The largest festival of its kind on this continent. The sheer number of discoveries is astonishing." — FANGORIA MAGAZINE

"Top notch... people line up around the block for hours in wait to see a film" — FILM THREAT

"If I missed Fantasia I'd drive an icepick into my brain" — RUE MORGUE MAGAZINE
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- HISTORY & SELECT SUCCESS STORIES :

Since its inception in 1996, Fantasia has become a hugely popular Montreal summer tradition for around 100,000 festival-goers to spend 18 days being amazed by sensational filmmaking from across the world.

Over the years, Fantasia has proven itself to be one of the largest and the most cutting-edge festivals of its kind, with numerous acquisitions of significant Premieres being announced each summer.

Among our higher-profile accomplishments, Fantasia is regularly cited as the place where the J-horror wave began in this part of the world - our North American Premiere of Hideo Nakata’s RINGU led directly to Dreamworks acquiring the film and producing its blockbuster remake, and Fantasia was also the first festival in North America to screen a film by Takashi Miike.

Our 2025 World Premiere of Ian Tuason’s THE UNDERTONE led to a bidding war that closed with A24 acquiring World Rights within days of its launch, shortly after it was announced that the film won our Gold audience award for Best International Feature.

In 2024, NEON acquired Chris Stuckmann’s SHELBY OAKS several weeks after Fantasia announced the film’s World Premiere, a month in advance of our screening.

Fantasia's 2024 International Premiere of Junichi Yasuda’s A SAMURAI IN TIME created such positive word-of-mouth that it dramatically altered the film’s domestic release in Japan, prompting Gaga Communications to pick it up for distribution, expanding it from a single-screen indie run to hundreds, leading to numbers so impressive that Toho became involved and expanded its screen count further. The film went on to reach the ¥1bn landmark at the local box office, cementing its position as one of the country’s biggest sleeper hits. This followed a historic win for the feature at the 48th Japan Academy Prize on March 14, where it became the first independent film ever to win Best Picture.

Our 2022 World Premiere of Kyle Edward Ball's SKINAMARINK lead to the film's acquisition and enormously successful release by IFC.

Select additional breakouts among many: Our World Premiere of PERFECT BLUE launched the feature career of Satoshi Kon. Fantasia was the first festival in the world to show work from a then-19-year-old Adam Wingard when we world premiered HOME SICK. Timur Bekmambetov’s ongoing series of Screenlife films was launched with our World Premiere of Levan Gabriadze’s UNFRIENDED (under its original title CYBERNATURAL), which led to Universal and Blumhouse acquiring the film. Our World Premiere of Daniel Goldhaber’s debut CAM saw the film bought by Netflix. Our World Premiere of THE MIDNIGHT SWIM launched Sarah Adina Smith. We World Premiered Érik Canuel’s BON COP BAD COP, which went on to become the highest-grossing Canadian film domestically for some time. Fantasia introduced Hélène Cattet and Bruno Forzani to the public when we World Premiered their debut short CATHARSIS and our Canadian premiere of PI marked the first time a film by Darren Aronofsky was shown in Canada. Fantasia launched Toby Poser, John Adams and Zelda Adams (The Adams Family) into cult stardom with our World Premiere of THE DEEPER YOU DIG (and subsequent World Premieres of HELLBENDER, WHERE THE DEVIL ROAMS, HELL HOLE and MOTHER OF FLIES).

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- OUR INTERNATIONAL CO-PRODUCTION MARKET :

In 2012, Fantasia launched the Frontières International Co-Production Market as well as a film market component. Our market lineup has since featured dazzling new projects from Joe Dante, Buddy Giovinazzo, Jacob Tierney, Bobcat Goldthwait, Dario Argento and Andrzej Zulawski, to name a few. Subsequent market projects that went into production include RKSS' TURBO KID (2015), Julia Ducournau's RAW (2016), Alexandre O. Philippe's 78/52 (2017), Robin Aubert’s LES AFFAMÉS (2017), Dominique Rocher's THE NIGHT EATS THE WORLD (2018), Lorcan Finnegan’s VIVARIUM (2019), Mike Ahern & Enda Loughman's EXTRA ORDINARY (2019), Zoe Wittock’s JUMBO (2020), Prano Bailey-Bond’s CENSOR (2021), Valdimar Jóhannson’s LAMB (2021), Hanna Bergholm’s HATCHING (2022), Kirsten Carthew’s POLARIS (2022), Nyla Innuksuk’s SLASH/BACK (2022) and Jacqueline Castel’s MY ANIMAL (2023).

To learn more about our co-production market, visit Frontières’ website here : https://frontieresmarket.com/en/
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