Saskatoon may seem far away from the city centers where the big gun events like Fantasia take place, but thanks to Festival Director John Allison, programming director Steven Landry and the rest of their team SFFF helps make this prairie town the center of gonzo cinema for a few days in November.
The selection includes a number of hits from the festival circuit, including Gaspar Noé‘s Cannes and TIFF danceathon Climax (our review:), the Fantasia award-winning Cam and the emotional and effective Tigers Are Not Afraid (our review).
This is a rare opportunity for Saskatchewanians to celebrate the best in world genre cinema, and with this kind of broad, well curated selection the ninth annual SFFF looks to provide plenty to take in.
SFFF runs from November 14-18, 2018
Press release below:
9th Annual Saskatoon Fantastic Film Festival
Festival expands its lineup with a second batch of feature films including a pair of music based films that will delight the crowd!
Leading the pack on the second round announcement are the festival favourites ANNA AND THE APOCALYPSE (Opening) and HEAVY TRIP (Closing).
Saskatoon Fantastic Film Festival, Saskatchewan’s largest feature film festival returns for its 9th edition at the Broadway Theatre this November 14th through 18th with an extra day, a larger line-up of films, cartoons and a retrospective on body horror.
“Not only are we screening the absolute best of this year’s festival circuit darlings such as TIGERS ARE NOT AFRAID and SATAN’S SLAVES, but we’ve dug deeper to highlight some of this year’s best new young talent, such as Mitzi Peirone’s BRAID, Elle Callahan’s HEAD COUNT, and Tílman Zinger’s LUZ. As well we’re thrilled to screen two fantastic queer and sex-work positive films, the 70’s giallo throwback KNIFE + HEART and the techno-terror film CAM!” said Programming Director Steven Landry.
More information is available concerning the Saskatoon Fantastic Film Festival at www.skfilmfest.com.
Final Round of announced Feature Films
ABDUCTED IN PLAIN SIGHT
On October 17, 1974, 12 year old Jan Broberg was kidnapped by her next door neighbor and parents’ best friend. Abducted In Plain Sight is a feature length documentary about the stranger than fiction, true story of the Brobergs; an Idaho family who fell under the spell of a sociopathic neighbor with designs on their twelve-year-old daughter.
ANNA AND THE APOCALYPSE
When the zombie apocalypse hits the sleepy town of Little Haven – at Christmas – teenager Anna and her high school friends have to fight, sing and dance to survive, with the undead horde all around them.
BRAID
Two wanted women decide to rob their wealthy psychotic friend who lives in the fantasy world they created as children; to take the money they have to take part in a deadly perverse game of make believe.
CRISIS JUNG
Welcome to a world ravaged by explosions of violence, a world without love. Jung, the broken-hearted hero, pursues his quest: reunite with Maria, his lost love, savagely decapitated by Little Jesus. He can count on the support of allies met along his bloody path, encounters that provide an understanding of others, but especially of himself. He also has to deal with his “violent outbreaks,” an incontrollable curse that springs from his murderous soul.
HEAVY TRIP
Heavy trip is a feel-good comedy about a young man trying to overcome his fears by leading Finnish heavy metal band, Impaled Rektum, to the hottest metal festival of Norway. The journey includes heavy metal, grave robbing, vikings and an armed conflict between Finland and Norway.
KNIFE + HEART
Paris, Summer 1979. Anne produces third-rate gay porn. After her editor and lover Lois leaves her, she tries to win her back by shooting her most ambitious film yet with her trusted, flaming sidekick Archibald. But one of her actors is brutally murdered and Anne gets caught up in a strange investigation that turns her life upside-down.
YOU MIGHT BE THE KILLER
A camp counselor suffering from blackouts finds himself surrounded by murder victims. He turns to his horror movie enthusiast friend for advice, and to contend with the idea he may be the killer.
First Round Announced Feature Films
SUPERGRID (Cast and Crew to be in Attendance)
SUPERGRID is an upcoming feature film from the team that brought you WOLFCOP. In the near future, a young smuggler is forced to make a run on the road that took the life of his sister. He has to convince his older brother to get back on the “Grid” and help him clear the debt.
ROCK STEADY ROW
Demented chaos rules this bizarro-world college campus where the reigning gang-frats target a freshman, who dare crosses their path. Trapped between a blaze of twisted “Mad Max” style power games, he shrewdly plays both sides, fueling apocalyptic-sized battles that escalate to ensnare the school Dean who’s coming unglued.
SATAN’S SLAVES
Rini has been living at her grandmother’s in the countryside with her parents and three younger brothers since they had to sell the house uptown to get medication for her mother who has been mysteriously ill for more than three years. After her mother dies, Rini’s father goes to a faraway town to work. Evil entities haunt Rini’s house and start to terrorize her and her brothers. Rini traces back the roots of the evil and learns that her family was involved in an unholy pact in the past. She must face the horrifying truth from the past to stay alive.
HEAD COUNT
During a weekend getaway to Joshua Tree, a group of teenagers find themselves under mental and physical assault from a supernatural entity that mimics their appearances as it completes an ancient ritual.
TIGERS ARE NOT AFRAID
Thousands have been murdered or gone missing in Mexico’s ongoing violent drug war. The result is many orphaned children living on the streets caught in the unceasing cartel crossfire. In her third work of immense beauty, pain, fear and joy, writer/director Issa López tells the magical story of five such urchins making the best of their daily struggle to survive. Perfectly balanced between harsh reality and the fantastic, this unflinching cautionary fable is part PAN’S LABYRINTH, part CITY OF GOD, all innovative South of the Border fairytale.
LUZ
Fleeing from the grasp of a possessed woman, a distressed cabdriver begins a confession in a rundown police station that endangers everyone who crosses her path.
PROSPECT
A teenage girl and her father travel to a remote alien moon, aiming to strike it rich. They’ve secured a contract to harvest a large deposit of the elusive gems hidden in the depths of the moon’s toxic forest. But there are others roving the wilderness and the job quickly devolves into a fight to survive. Forced to contend not only with the forest’s other ruthless inhabitants, but with her own father’s greed-addled judgment, the girl finds she must carve her own path to escape.
CAM
The horror movie is a technology-driven psychological thriller set in the world of webcam porn. It follows Alice (Brewer), an ambitious camgirl, who wakes up one day to discover she’s been replaced on her show with an exact replica of herself. As this copy begins to push the boundaries of Alice’s internet identity, the control that Alice has over her life, and the men in it, vanishes. While she struggles to regain what she’s lost, she slowly finds herself drawn back to her show and to the mysterious person who has taken her place.
CLIMAX
A troupe of young dancers gathers in a remote and empty school building to rehearse. Following an unforgettable opening performance, the troupe begins an all-night celebration that turns nightmarish as the dancers discover they’ve been pounding cups of sangria laced with potent LSD.
SATURDAY MORNING ALL YOU CAN EAT CEREAL CARTOON PARTY
Curated by film programmer writer and pop culture connoisseur Kier-La Janisse, Saskatoon is in for a real treat with 3 hours of the weird and wonderful world of cartoons from the 40s through 80s.
Body Horror Retrospective
VIDEODROME
When Max Renn goes looking for edgy new shows for his sleazy cable TV station, he stumbles across the pirate broadcast of a hyperviolent torture show called Videodrome. As he struggles to unearth the origins of the program, he embarks on a hallucinatory journey into a shadow world of right-wing conspiracies, sadomasochistic sex games, and bodily transformation.
SOCIETY
Billy Warlock (“Baywatch”) stars as a pampered Beverly Hills teen whose world is golden, until his sister’s ex gives him an audiotape of what sounds like his family partaking in an incestuous, murderous orgy. Thus begins his journey down a gore-and-goo-lined rabbit hole into the shocking underbelly of ‘high society…’
BODY MELT
Residents of the suburban cul-de-sac Pebbles Court receive unexpected samples of an experimental vitamin made by a strange health spa named Vimuville. When the town adds the powder to their diets, they experience strange macabre visions — and worse, their bodies mutate, ooze, and melt! As coroner visits become daily, Detective Phillips suspects Vimuville — but will he uncover its diabolical motives before the whole of Australia is subjected to BODY MELT?!?!
