The Fantasia Film Festival, held each year in Montreal, offers the world’s best selection of new genre films. With more than 100 features screening each, from both studios and independent producers, and across science fiction, fantasy, horror, action, and more, it provides a go-to selection for fans of cinema to track down, check out, and enjoy.

The 2023 festival opens next Thursday 20 July. Here are 10 films screening at the festival that caught my eye.

A DISTURBANCE IN THE FORCE
(2023, USA, d. Jeremy Koon & Steve Kozak.)
1978’s notorious Star Wars Holiday Special is something of a legend in sci-fi fan circles. A surreal, positively awful variety show featured the lead actors from Star Wars (Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisher, and Mark Hamill) and a host of celebrity guests in a combination of comedy skits, musical numbers, and even an animated sequence introducing Boba Fett. There is no easy way to it – George Lucas made certain of that – but its reputation lingers 35 years after it was broadcast. Koon and Kozak’s documentary takes a well-deserved look into the special, its making, and its fans.

EIGHT EYES
(2023, USA/Serbia, d. Austin Jennings.)
Vinegar Syndrome has been a superb distributor of all manner of independent, cult, classic, and weird features, and with Eight Eyes they are finally producing a film of their own. Shot on location in Serbia, this looks set to be an inventive twist on the “holiday gone wrong” genre of horror movies. The film stars Emily Sweet (V/H/S/99) with Brad Thomas and Bruno Veljanovsk. I’m intrigued not by Eight Eyes itself so much as what this new production represents. Vinegar Syndrome have a pretty bold strategy in the kinds of films they release, and if they apply the same tone to their own work we could be seeing the rise of great new voice in cult cinema.

MAD FATE
(2023, Hong Kong, d. Soi Cheang.)
Soi Cheang is one of the best filmmakers working in Hong Kong and China today, with a string of outstanding films to his name including The Monkey King trilogy, Accident, and Limbo. Mad Fate is his latest film and is produced by fan-favourite Johnnie To and written by Yau Nai-hoi (Throw Down, Election). A fortune teller (Gordon Lam) and serial killer (Lokman Yeung) are open the run from a hard-driven police detective in this genre blend of supernatural thriller, police procedural, and comedy.

#MANHOLE
(2023, Japan, d. Kazayoshi Kumakiri.)
This new Japanese thriller was already on my radar, amassing a wave of acclaim for its tense, claustrophic premise and its clever blend of thriller, black comedy, and social satire. On the way home from his buck’s night, a successful real estate broker drunkenly falls down an open manhole into the sewer below. Injured and unable to escape, he must somehow get help from the city above – except no one believes his story. The film stars former pop singer Yuto Nakajima. Director Kazayoshi Kumakiri previously directed romantic drama My Man.

MAYHEM!
(2023, France/Thailand, d. Xavier Gens.)
Something I love about Fantasia is that it really respects and promotes action cinema alongside other film genres. This new effort, about a runaway amateur boxer (Nassim Lyes) forced to fight for the Thai mob, comes from director Xavier Gens. Gens’ most popular film is almost certainly French horror hit Frontier(s), but anyone who saw his work in TV series Gangs of London already knows how hard and effective his action credentials are.

PEOPLE WHO TALK TO PLUSHIES ARE KIND
(2023, Japan, d. Yurina Kaneko.)
I’m not personally looking forward to this film, because I’ve already had the pleasure of seeing it. This intimate college drama focuses on a “plushies” club, where members quietly tell their problems to a variety of soft toys carefully shelved around a college meeting room. It’s a wonderful and strange film that absolutely deserves to find an audience. Back in March I reviewed it during the Osaka Asian Film Festival, where I called it “a quiet and delicate delight.” (link)

RESTORE POINT
(2023, Czechia, d. Robert Hloz.)
This Czech science fiction feature picks up Prague in the year 2041, where death has effectively been cured by individuals paying to upload their memories onto the cloud – for easy installation into a new body later. A police detective (Andrea Mohylová) infiltrates an anti-restore cult to solve a murder, accompanied by a restored copy of the victim (Matej Hádek). This is allegedly the first Czech science fiction in 40 years, which given the country’s long history with the genre (Fantastic Planet, Karel Čapek) is cause for celebration.

THE NIGHT OWL
(2022, South Korea, An Tae-jin.)
An Tae-jin worked as assistant director on Korean classic The King and the Clown, but it’s inexplicably taken until 2022 for him to make his own directing debut. The Night Owl looks to be an intriguing period mystery inspired by true events. In An’s film, a court acupuncturist (Ryu Jun-yeol, of Believer and Alienoid fame) witnesses the fatal poisoning of Crown Prince Sohyeon in 1645. The catch? The witness, now fearing for his life, is blind.

SAND LAND
(2023, Japan, d. Toshihisa Yokoshima.)
Artist Akira Toriyama is as good as a household name in Japan, thanks to his internationally successful Dragonball franchise of manga and anime. He has written and illustrated many more titles than that, however, which is why it is great to one of the less well-known works, 2000’s Sand Land, receives an anime feature treatment. Director Toshihisa Yokoshima previously directed the short feature Cocolors (2017) and videogame tie-in Tales of Crestoria: The Wake of Sin.

SKIN DEEP
(2022, Germany, d. Alex Schaad.)
Finally, I found myself intrigued by this German science fiction romance about body swapping. It has received strong critical acclaim since it’s premiere last year, and was awarded the Queer Lion award at the Venice Film Festival. It’s easy to make a guns-blazing, loud, CGI-filled science fiction movie. It’s much harder to make something more meditative, quiet, and thoughtful. I am getting really positive vibes from Skin Deep, and cannot wait to check it out.

If you’d like to check out the entire Fantasia 2023 program, it available online here. The festival begins on Thursday 20 July.