Fantasia Festival Celebrates Thirty Years
This week is Fantasia International Film Festival’s 30th birthday, and they’re kicking off this year’s 18-day blowout celebration with the opening of Her Private Hell. Founded in 1996, and running for 30 consecutive years, Fantasia has become a celebrated festival, a centre of genre filmmaking, and a breeding ground for successful World Premieres.
From 1997’s Perfect Blue to 2025’s Undertones, Fantasia has been the home of the World Premieres of films such as Bon Cop Bad Cop, Unfriended, and The Deeper You Dig. Each year’s edition is focused on showcasing the most exciting and individualistic examples of contemporary international genre cinema from every corner of the globe.
While this year’s festival is unfortunately lacking in Anglo Montreal entries, it is not lacking in Montreal presence. From a collective’s reimagining of a 1984 classic to three films taking place in our beautiful city, representation is alive and well.
To prepare you for your hyper-local Montreal experience of the 2026 Fantasia International Film Festival, I’ll preview this year’s Montreal-focused entries, then highlight the rest of the festival’s program, including the baffling decision to present an honor to an entirely dishonorable Quebec director.
Kino Montréal présente La guerre des tuques : Réimaginée
A Quebec classic released in the winter of 1984, this Quebec comedy-drama, originally directed by André Melançon, is much more than a film about a particular generation—it’s a film about identity. The young residents of a small village in the Baie-Saint-Paul region decide to spend their Christmas holidays playing war. Two armies face off, and the winning team will share a haul of miscellaneous items. Almost all the children eventually join in the game, all except Ti-Guy La Lune, the peaceful nature-lover, and his cousin Daniel Blanchette from Victoriaville, who is visiting for the festive season. Throughout all this, Pierre, one of the young lads, is very worried because his dog Cléo is ill, and his parents no longer want her inside the house. But then Pierre and his team build an incredible fortress of snow and ice, full of secret hiding places, doors, windows, decorations, towers, and battlements, as well as emergency exits—which are, of course, secret too.
The KINO Remake is set to be a truly spectacular event. The script has been divided into 20 parts, each directed by a filmmaker who is a member of the collective. Produced in full collaboration with the film’s rights holders, it will finally have its world premiere this summer in its official final version. Among the filmmakers taking part in the project are several Fantasia regulars, such as Rémi Fréchette, Jimmy Pettigrew, Isabelle Giroux, and Charles Parisé. But the project also gives a chance to some filmmakers who are set to become Fantasia stars in the coming years… The full list of directors is as follows (in alphabetical order): Frédéric Barbusci, Suzanne Cordeau-Andrews, Gabriel Desgagné-Saez, Rita Faid, Dany Foster, Rémi Fréchette, Isabelle Giroux, Hippolyte Guyon, Noah Lebel-Turcotte, Justin Leblanc, Thierry Mercure, Kevin Miclette, Marc-André Morissette, Charles Parisé, Jimmy Pettigrew, Andréanne Poisson-Robert, Antoine Symoens, Camille Théberge, and Juliette S. Turcot. A big night with some great people in store. – Translation: Rupert Bottenberg
DIRECTED BY
Charles Parisé, Frédéric Barbusci, Isabelle Giroux, Camille Théberge, Kevin Miclette, Hippolyte Guyon, Antoine Symoens, Andréanne Poisson-Robert, Rémi Fréchette, Noah Lebel-Turcotte, Suzanne Cordeau-Andrews, Justin Leblanc, Dany Foster, Gabriel Desgagnés-Saez, Juliette S. Turcot, Marc-André Morisette, Jimmy G. Pettigrew, Rita Faid, Thierry Mercure
PRODUCER
Kino Montreal
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Les Saturnides
The sudden appearance of strange glowing clouds over Montreal plunges the city into a mass insomnia. Camille, an overprotective young mother, and Philippe, her blindly optimistic boyfriend, find themselves at the heart of this unsettling world where sleep deprivation begins to wear down minds. Trapped in a city under a state of emergency, they must fight to distinguish reality from illusion as growing hallucinations and creeping paranoia turn their lives into a waking nightmare.
DIRECTED BY
Neegan Trudel
PRODUCED BY
Julie Prieur, Neegan Trudel
STARRING
Rosalie Bonenfant, Rüdi Loup, Mario Saint-Amand
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Les loups
Shaken by an abortion, Élie (Evelyne Brochu), a young Montreal woman in the throes of an identity crisis, travels to a fishing village in the Îles-de-la-Madeleine at the height of the ice melt, during the seal-hunting season. The inhabitants of this insular village are like a pack, with Maria (Louise Portal), a unifying figure, acting as a true matriarch and pack leader. Élie, seeking guidance and hoping to rebuild her life, tries to get closer to some of the locals. But against a backdrop of intense tensions between hunters and environmental activists, the presence of this mysterious young woman is poorly received and arouses deep suspicion. Not everyone can join a pack. Élie is there to undertake a quest that is, in fact, more personal than a journalistic investigation. She must measure herself against a people accustomed to battling the raw forces of nature. Insular creatures, living in tune with the seasons. With the sea raging, the sky rumbling, and the wind sweeping everything in its path, one is right to wonder what has brought this city girl to such an inhospitable place.
DIRECTED BY
Sophie Desraspe
PRODUCED BY
Marc Daigle, Sophie Salbot
STARRING
Evelyne Brochu, Martin Dubreuil, Stéphane Gagnon, Benoît Gouin, Louise Portal, Gilbert Sicotte
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With a complete lineup of over 125 features and 200+ shorts, Fantasia has plenty to keep you occupied from July 16 to August 2. Check out the full schedule here.
But if you’re on a budget, and you’re looking for some film-adjacent entertainment, inspiration, even some education, Fantasia International Film Festival has you covered with hours of supplementary programming. From masterclasses and artists talks, to trivia nights and VHS tributes, and the launch of a new board game, there is truly something for everyone. The full list of programming can be found here. For the fans attending multiple screenings, make sure to mark July 25th in your calendar, with the Fantasia Jury Awards taking place at Cinéma du Musée, starting at 5:15PM.
As if more than 300 film offerings and numerous events weren’t enough, the festival will bestow honors on numerous filmmakers this year. The Cheval Noir Career Achievement Award will be presented to Danish director, screenwriter, and producer Nicolas Winding Refn, as well as screenwriter, and director Takashi Shimizu. The 2026 Indie Maverick Award will go to two-time Academy Award nominee Don Hertzfeldt, and editor, cameraman, and director Bruce McDonald will win the 2026 Canadian Trailblazer Award.
In its 30th year, the Fantasia International Film Festival will present the prestigious Denis-Héroux Career Award to three recipients this year: FX masters The Blood Brothers, actress Louise Portal, and legendary prick Robert Lepage. For those unfamiliar, Lepage has had a storied entertainment career, particularly as a director, highlighted by his 2018 show SLĀV (a stage production where white people portrayed black slaves), ultimately pulled by the Montreal Jazz Fest, but only after a wave of common sense protests. In defiance, he followed this up with a production where white people portrayed first nations people, with the production (obviously) driven out of Canada, finding a home briefly in Europe, while Lepage positioned himself as a victim of censorship. He has since vowed to work with “greater racial sensitivity”, but do the research yourself, and you’ll find he’s just an old racist white man from Quebec, and Fantasia should be fucking ashamed to be awarding him anything in 2026. I’m not saying that people can’t change, that they can’t learn. I am saying that giving this man a lifetime achievement award in the face of so many deserving artists is, in the words of Lepage himself, “clumsiness and misjudgement”.
But, hey, let’s not have this one mistake demerit an important award from an important festival! Recipients of Fantasia’s career awards have included Guillermo del Toro, Ken Russell, Ray Harryhausen, Andrzej Zulawski, Mike Flanagan, John Woo, Danny Elfman, Takashi Miike, John Carpenter, David Bordwell, Joe Dante, Genndy Tartakovsky, Sheila McCarthy, Mamoru Oshii, José Mojica Marins, Tobe Hooper, Jean-Claude Lord, John Landis, Kier-La Janisse, Vincenzo Natali, Don Bluth, and Ted Kotcheff, among others. This is a staggering list of talent, and I congratulate Louise Portal and the Blood Brothers, they’ve earned their place.
The 30th edition of the Fantasia International Film Festival will take place in Montreal from July 16th through August 2nd, 2026. It is presented by MELS in collaboration with Concordia University and made possible by the financial support of Telefilm Canada, the Société́ de développement des entreprises culturelles (SODEC), the Ministère du Tourisme, the Ministère des Affaires municipales et de l’Habitation, the city of Montreal, the Conseil des arts de Montreal, and Tourisme Montreal.
