2025 horror and genre film festival season officially starts on July 16 with the 29th edition of Fantasia International Film Festival taking place in Montréal. There will be coverage of films posted here throughout the festival.
Ari Aster’s EDDINGTON starring Joaquin Phoenix, Pedro Pascal, Austin Butler, and Emma Stone will kick things off. Genndry Tartakovsky’s animated feature FIXED will close the festival on August 3.
32 features will have their world premieres and there are many films that debuted at major festivals like Cannes, Sundance, Berlinale, SXSW, Tribeca, and Annecy.
Laura Casabé’s Sundance film THE VIRGIN OF THE QUARRY LAKE is a tension-filled Mariana Enríquez adaptation that looks at teenage desire and obsession. It is one of the better coming-of-age horror movies this side of Julia Ducournau’s Raw.
In QUEENS OF THE DEAD, which premiered at Tribeca, George A. Romero’s daughter Tina Romero follows in her father’s footsteps and delivers a vibrant and campy queer zombie horror set in Brooklyn. The fantastic ensemble cast led by Katy O’Brian elevate this gory and entertaining horror comedy.
Fantasia will screen two films by the prolific Takashi Miike including the thought-provoking and masterfully directed courtroom drama SHAM and the martial arts action film BLAZING FISTS, which premiered to glowing reviews at this year’s International Film Festival Rotterdam. Episodes from Miike’s upcoming manga series THE NYAIGHT OF THE LIVING CAT will also be screened.
Director Alex Russell’s Sundance film LURKER provides a thrilling look at obsessive fandom and artistic creativity with impressive performances from Théodore Pellerin, Archie Madekwe, and Havana Rose Liu.
There is a lot more to look forward to. Here are some of the other highlights of the extensive Fantasia 2025 lineup:
Together – Michael Shanks
Terrestrial – Steve Pink
The Wailing – Pedro Martín Calero
Mother of Flies – John & Zelda Adams, Toby Poser
Reflection in a Dead Diamond – Hélène Cattet, Bruno Forzani
F***toys – Annapurna Sriram
Good Boy – Ben Leonberg
Influencers – Kurtis David Harder, Georgina Campbell, Dylan Playfair
Every Heavy Thing – Mickey Reece, Barbara Crampton
The Forbidden City – Gabriele Mainetti
Find Your Friends – Izabel Pakzad
OBEX – Albert Birney
It Ends – Alexander Ullom
Redux Redux – Kevin and Matthew McManus
Fixed – Genndy Tartakovsky
Touch Me – Addison Heimann
Holy Night: Demon Hunters – Lim Dae-hee
LifeHack – Ronan Corrigan
Hi-Five – Kang Hyung-chul
Stuntman – Albert and Herbert Leung
Noise – Kim Soo-jin
Omniscient Reader: The Prophecy – Kim Byung-woo
Sweetness – Emma Higgins
I Fell in Love With a Z-Grade Director from Brooklyn – Ken’ichi Ugana
Straatcoaches vs. Aliens – Michael Middelkoop
The Verdict – Lee Chang-hee, Yusron Fuadi
Foreigner – Ava Maria Safai
The School Duel – Todd Wiseman Jr.
Transcending Dimensions – Toshiaki Toyoda
$POSITIONS – Brandon Daley
Dollhouse – Shinobi Yaguchi
The Serpent’s Skin – Alice Maio Mackay
Dui Shaw – Nuhash Humayun
I Live Here Now – Julie Pacino
Maya, Give Me a Title – Michel Gondry
Mononoke the Movie: Chapter II – The Ashes of Rage – Kenji Nakamura
Death Does Not Exist – Félix Dufour-Laperrière
Dog of God – Raitis and Lauris Ābele
Honeko Akanabe’s Bodyguards – Junichi Ichikawa
Hellcat – Brock Bodell
Kazakh Scary Tales – Adilkhan Yerzhanov
Hold the Fort – William Bagley
The Bearded Girl – Jody Wilson
The Well – Hubert Davis
You can dive deeper into this year’s selections at fantasiafestival.com and via their Letterboxd list at the link below.
https://letterboxd.com/fantasiafest/list/full-features-program-fantasia-2025
