The Fantasia International Film Festival — opening Thursday and running through Aug. 2 — turns 30 this year. Its long-standing artistic director Mitch Davis has been there since Year 2, and his enthusiasm for this continent’s largest genre film fest has only escalated over the decades.
Davis took in the fest’s inaugural edition as a spectator and was not only immediately smitten, but also convinced it had a future — one that included him.
He had figured he would be among 10 people standing in line outside the Imperial Theatre for the première screening of the Hong Kong action flick My Father Is a Hero, starring a then-little-known Jet Li. He figured wrong. There were hundreds of people in line, and some couldn’t even get in.
“I knew then I had to get involved,” Davis loves recalling. “I also realized there was a market for absolutely everything in this city.”
Montreal has been inundated with every kind of film festival imaginable. Not all survive. But Fantasia has flourished with its idiosyncratic focus on auteur-driven, indie esoterica.
As Davis puts it: “Fantasia is a celebration of the eccentric and unclassifiable, playing all films with equal importance.”
Fantasia has also made quite the name for itself beyond the city. Quentin Tarantino — who chose the fest for the North American debut of Inglourious Basterds — was effusive in his praise, calling Fantasia “the most important and prestigious genre film festival on this continent.” Director Guillermo del Toro was equally blown away, marvelling: “Fantasia is a shrine.”
No surprise that Fantasia has drawn the likes of John Carpenter, Ken Russell, Robert Pattinson, Mark Hamill, the Safdie brothers and Adam Wingard over the years.
“It’s a real privilege and gratifying to be able to do this,” Davis says. “Years ago, when the festival began, there was always a sense that so many of the filmmakers that we admired were almost single-handshakes of cinephilia, because many of the most interesting European and Asian genre films just didn’t get distributed in North America properly. If they did get released, it would often be years later in a dubbed version, retitled, rescored, even recut in bastardized fashion that didn’t represent what the films were really about.
“In the first years, half the Hong Kong films I knew about were from going to Chinatown and renting original laser discs just to be able to see them for their visual film language. We had no idea there could be such massive audiences that cared for these films as much as we do. That’s just the most surreal and fantastic thing. And now everything has changed so much in the way these films are distributed and the access filmgoers have to them.”
“Watching films with our audience brings me so much joy. I feel I’m the luckiest person on Earth,” says Fantasia artistic director Mitch Davis, seen at the 2025 edition of the festival. (Vincent Fréchette)
Davis has always credited Fantasia’s success to the open-mindedness of its fans. “Filmmakers take risks here, but so do the audiences,” he notes. “But I’ve always felt that Fantasia is a place where risks are rewarded.
“As the world grows increasingly more unstable and irrationally volatile, genre cinema is getting at once dreamier, angrier, sadder, more poignant and poetic, and even more open to extreme experimentation in terms of story, structure and tone, taking even bolder, more radical swings into hugely individualistic places.”
More than 200 shorts and 125 features from 54 countries will be unspooled at this 30th edition. The festival’s opening film is the Canadian première of Nicolas Winding Refn’s Her Private Hell (Concordia’s Hall Theatre, Thursday at 6:30 p.m.). Closing the fest will be the world première of Canadian Zach Lipovsky’s Freaks Part II (Hall Theatre, Aug. 2 at 6:15 p.m.).
Fantasia will also be presenting career achievement awards to Refn and Takashi Shimizu, as well as the Prix Denis Héroux for achievement in Quebec cinema to Robert Lepage and the Canadian Trailblazer Award to Bruce McDonald.
Among the special guests attending are Hacks star and Emmy winner Hannah Einbinder, who’s at the fest for Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma (Hall Theatre, Friday at 9:30 p.m.); Patrick Wilson, one of the leads in the new TV iteration of Cape Fear, who will be on hand for a screening of the final two episodes of the series (Cinéma du Musée, July 30 at 9 p.m.); and Vera Farmiga (Up in the Air, The Departed) for the Canadian debut of The Leader (Hall Theatre, July 30 at 6:15 p.m.).
Hacks star and Emmy winner Hannah Einbinder is among the special guests attending the Fantasia International Film Festival’s 30th edition. Frederic J. Brown / AFP via Getty Images
“We play every kind of film one could imagine,” Davis says. “This year’s mix entertains, challenges and thrills while addressing themes of bodily autonomy, ecological devastation, loss of agency, the intersections of poverty and exploitation and authoritarian misuse of technology.”
That it?
“It’s super-varied genre storytelling of every stripe for just about everybody, from ultra-gripping thrillers with dancing yakuza gangsters to queer body horror, from alien pregnancies to animated romantic dramedies, from vampirism to class war. What ties all these films together is an extreme purity of vision — films made with a point of view with genuine conviction.”
Gotcha. Can’t think of a genre Davis doesn’t cover. You’ve got to respect his passion for the craft.
“Watching films with our audience brings me so much joy. I feel I’m the luckiest person on Earth.”
Buddy is a “gonzo horror/comedy set largely inside the world of a children’s TV show,” Fantasia’s Mitch Davis says. (Fantasia International Film Festival)
Mitch Davis’s Fantasia picks
Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma
(Concordia’s Hall Theatre, July 17 at 9:30 p.m.) “Absolutely brilliant. Jane Schoenbrun is one of the most exciting and inspired talents in film today. We’re showing its Canadian première, with Schoenbrun and Hannah Einbinder attending.”
(Hall Theatre, July 18 at 8:05 p.m.) “A moving, animated Japanese romantic dramedy that we’re world-premièring, about two illustrators in their 30s falling in love for the first time. With director Masanao Kawajiri attending.”
(Hall Theatre, July 24 at 9:30 p.m.) “The Lure is one of my favourite films of the last 20 years and I’m absolutely thrilled that we’re world-premièring new work from its director, Agnieszka Smoczynska, who will be attending. Hypnotic sci-fi/thriller set in a future world controlled by sentient AI, starring Noomi Rapace.”
(Concordia’s J.A. DeSève Cinema, July 26 at 6:40 p.m. and July 28 at 1:25 p.m.) “Unbelievably engaging and entertaining mockumentary on a young, rising star in Paris’s hip-hop scene taking a hard turn when the singer is vampirized mid-shoot. The first mockumentary that I’ve loved in years — fresh, funny and full of personality and invention. World première, with director Nicky Murphy and actors Louiza Aura and Leonor Oberson attending. Very likely to be one of this year’s big breakout films. It’s just so terrific.”
(Hall Theatre, Aug. 1 at 6:25 p.m.) “American gonzo horror/comedy set largely inside the world of a children’s TV show where a homicidal Barney-like character (Keegan-Michael Key) bends time and space. Crazy fun and more than a little unsettling, with a cast including Cristin Milioti and Michael Shannon. A major breakout at Sundance; we’ll be presenting the film’s international première, with writer/director Casper Kelly attending.”
(Hall Theatre, Aug. 1 at 9:20 p.m.) “Mind-blowing cyberpunk, Muay Thai action, sci-fi techno thriller. Spectacular! Also a world première, with director Paween Purijitpanya and star Sutthirak Subvijitra attending.”
(Hall Theatre, Aug. 2 at 3:40 p.m.) “Eccentric, smart adult fable from Australian filmmaker Dario Russo, set in a parallel reality where animals talk and scheme. I could not possibly adore this film more and I can’t wait to see it play in front of our audience. Inspired, twisted, brilliant and hilarious, and oh so sharply subversive, with insane puppeteered animal characters and an absolute dream cast: Emily Browning, Jai Courtney and singular voice performances from Olivia Colman and dearly departed Sam Neill.”
Editor’s Picks
AT A GLANCE
The 30th Fantasia International Film Festival starts Thursday and runs through Aug. 2. For full schedule and more information, visit fantasiafestival.com.