Wonder Watchlist

Fantasia International Film Festival is celebrating its 30th anniversary this year, and your favorite movie yapper will be covering it virtually! As the festival rolls out its programs for both feature and short films, there are a tremendous number of selections that stand out. From debut films to returning directors and everything in between, let’s dive into 10 films that caught my eye.

As I said, I will be covering the festival for the first time, some of these titles won’t be available on the online portion, but that won’t stop me from adding it to my list!

All synopsis and related information comes from the Fantasia’s official website lineup.

Blades of the Guardians Dir. Yuen Woo-ping

Synopsis: “Wanted, dead or alive! Or… pay off the bounty hunter. As chaos spreads across the kingdom, the mysterious Dao Ma (Wu Jing of WANDERING EARTH and SHAOLIN) and his young nephew travel from town to town to collect bounties. Fiercely successful, he soon catches the attention of the ruthless governor Chang (Jet Li, HERO, THE WARLORDS), who offers him an official job that he respectfully declines. Being freelance is what keeps him going. Not long after, he’s tasked with protecting a rebellious masked man, with a price on his head so high that other opportunistic swordsmen are soon in hot pursuit of them through the desert. None can match his fast and magnificent skills, until a man from his past with similar skills catches up. Their blades will soon converge.”

Get more information on Fantasia’s official website.

Buddy Dir. Casper Kelly

Synopsis: “Trapped inside the off-kilter world of a ’90s children’s television show, a young girl (Delaney Quinn, IF I HAD LEGS I’D KICK YOU) and her friends fight to escape a bloodthirsty, control-freak dinosaur mascot named Buddy (Keegan-Michael Key, KEANU). This is his world. They’re just (barely—and not always) living in it. Buddy can bend time and space. When wounded, he can heal himself. The show has gone on for years, through generations.”

Get more information on Fantasia’s official website.

Colony Dir. Yeon Sang-ho

Synopsis: “ “I am am the only vaccine that can stop this outbreak.” Professor Se-jeong (Gianna Jun) attends a biotech conference to hopefully start looking for a new career in the field. What is supposed to be a simple day of finding a new job turns into blood-soaked terror as she and other survivors are trapped in the building with nowhere to run as a dangerous virus mutates people into infected beings undergoing horrifying transformations. It’s a fight for survival against these mindless, cannibalistic freaks, while struggling to figure out how to end this deadly threat…”

Get more information on Fantasia’s official website.

Dance Freak Dir. Alan Resnick & Robby Rackleff

Synopsis: “Something sinister lurks beyond the horizon of DANCE FREAK. Violence reigns, smoke fills the sky, and an outbreak of a secret experiment is wreaking havoc on the community. An infectious virus possesses the afflicted: A rhythm enters their body, a pulsing, uncontrollable urge to move, dance, and destroy. “We just call it the Dance Freak,” says a whistleblower scientist, “because sometimes it dances in really freaky ways.” Directed by Adult Swim alumni Alan Resnick (THIS HOUSE HAS PEOPLE IN IT) and his Wham City collaborator Robby Rackleff, DANCE FREAK is an absurd, quick-paced, and outrageously funny dark comedy about the power of dance and the violent alienation of contemporary life. Embracing a grainy, high-contrast black-and-white image, the film evokes in equal parts the industrial surrealism and the psychedelic anxiety of the floating pig from Pink Floyd’s “Animals”.”

Get more information on Fantasia’s official website.

Godhead Dir. Mark H. Rapaport

Synopsis: “With his sophomore effort, GODHEAD, Rapaport plunges us back into his wickedly strange imagination in an equally baffling and engrossing film that examines the intertwining blood structures where fanaticism and obligation meet. The film follows eccentric twins who proclaim themselves prophets, blurring reality and delusion as they draw a priest into their supposedly divine mission. Shot by William Babcock (HIPPO, PLEDGE) in crisp black and white, the filmmaking embraces canted and exaggerated angles that draw on and subvert structures of power. A darkly comic work examining the limits of dogmatic belief, the film’s formal identity reflects themes of fanaticism within a world of increasingly fragmented and unreal truths. The film feels claustrophobic and uncertain, pulling us into the mindspace of religious indoctrination.”

Get more information on Fantasia’s official website.

I Love Paris Dir. Nicky Murphy

Synopsis: “I LOVE PARIS opens with an impromptu MTV CRIBS-style apartment tour. “This,” explains Paris, holding up a plastic horse, “is Rodrigo.” Moments later, she shows the viewer a clay statue in her maximalist apartment. “I got a boner for music,” she tells the camera, as she shows off her creation and his upturned erection and face, paying tribute to the musical gods. The film’s production design has an incredibly catered lived-in feel. Shot in a mockumentary style, I LOVE PARIS is an explosive and vibrant vampire film that is funny, dynamic, and haunting. Avoiding many of the pitfalls of mockumentary, I LOVE PARIS feels real but never loses touch with keeping the audience entertained. The editing style is quick, the compositions thoughtful, and the energy upbeat. Aminata Thiboult, who plays Paris, is an explosive talent; her screen presence is electric, playful, and intense. Her performance is hypnotic.”

Get more information on Fantasia’s official website.

The Journey to Gyeong-ju Dir. Kim Mi-jo

Synopsis: “A mourning mother named Ok-sil (Lee Jung-eun) and her three daughters wear matching T-shirts and go on a road trip to get revenge against the person responsible for the death of her youngest child, after they find out he’s been released from jail. During the first trial, he has received an initial sentence of 15 years in prison, but it has been shortened to eight afterwards. The horror of seeing the dead body of her daughter at the hospital has left Ok-sil traumatized ever since. Their journey takes an unexpected turn that challenges them to face their deep feelings of frustration, sorrow, and grief. What starts out as a mission of vengeance becomes an unpredictable and personal voyage of love, loss, and redemption.”

Get more information on Fantasia’s official website.

Nightborn Dir. Hanna Bergholm

Synopsis: “After much planning and anticipation. Saga (Seidi Haarla, COMPARTMENT NO. 6, ICEBREAKER) and her British husband Jon (Rupert Grint, the HARRY POTTER series, SERVANT) are starting a family. They move from the U.K. to Finland and take residence in the semi-dilapidated house where Saga largely grew up, deep in the forest. Soon, overtaken by energies in the woods, they make passionate love surrounded by an ocean of trees and foliage, and perhaps other things as well. Saga becomes pregnant. When the baby is born, it arrives with an unsettling wail and uncommonly hairy back. It behaves… badly. Never sleeping, refusing to eat, biting, breaking things, and generally tormenting all who engage. Everyone’s response is to blame Saga, accusing her of somehow being a terrible parent with an uncontrollable monster of a baby. A baby who’s becoming increasingly troll-like in appearance. Whose hunger only seems to be satisfied by raw meat or animal blood. Her marriage to Jon begins to crumble as Saga descends ever deeper into a tornado hole of maternal anguish, earthy mud, and milky blood. Have they created an actual monster together?”

Get more information on Fantasia’s official website.

Sour Minnows Dir. Harrison Atkins

Synopsis: “After unknowingly peeking through the veil, Ricky (David Brown, THE RAINBOW BRIDGE, JURY DUTY) and his roommate Tepper (Chase Williamson, THE GUEST, JOHN DIES AT THE END) witness six men sensually licking the pavement on an empty L.A. street. As time stretches and bends in the aftermath of this encounter, Ricky’s relations, including his situationship with fellow cinephile Aura (Suzanna Son, RED ROCKET, FEAR STREET: PROM QUEEN), begin to take on surprising new dimensions. Memories morph into lies, reality becomes malleable, and Ricky finds himself at the mercy of “The Yellow Thing,” an entity that wears people like costumes.”

Get more information on Fantasia’s official website.

When You Open the Door Dir. Eriko Katagiri

Synopsis: “ Eriko Katagiri’s WHEN YOU OPEN THE DOOR starts with a dream. A red-headed doll, a steamy glass, and the sounds of summer mix in with a grandfather clock. Miki, a 27-year-old working in an architectural firm, wakes up in her small apartment, pulled out of her sleepy memory. Miki’s world is quiet and strange, but it will soon be interrupted by a transformative experience that will change her forever. Miki’s life, a kind of daze of memory, dream and reality, starts to collapse. As she pieces together what happened to her, she starts to have memories of a wolf bite, but no one believes her. Katagiri’s film tackles feminine isolation and alienation in a unique and powerful way. The film has a languid numbness; a strange rhythm that’s both uncomfortable and infectious. Viewers who allow themselves to be carried into Miki’s mind will soon find themselves pulled into one of the most unique werewolf stories ever put to the big screen.”

Get more information on Fantasia’s official website.

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