The Fantasia Festival 2024 lineup has had a second wave of title reveals, including its opening film, Bookworm, starring Elijah Wood, and the return of an anime cult classic in movie form.
The genre festival will kick off its 28th edition on July 18, 2024, and run until August 4, 2024. Aside from the premieres of a host of genre movies, Cube filmmaker Vincenzo Natali is to receive the 2024 Canadian Trailblazer Award. a 4K restoration of Cube will be shown after he receives the award.
The Fantasia Festival 2024 second wave highlights are detailed below. This includes the opening film for the festival.
Fantasia Festival 2024 second wave highlights
Bookworm – Ant Timpson (World Premiere)
Mildred (Nell Fisher – Evil Dead Rise), a precocious eleven-year-old bookworm, escapes her humdrum existence by immersing herself in novels where literary adventures abound, with a long-dreamed quest to capture proof of a mythological beast known as The Canterbury Panther. When an unusual accident occurs, Mildred’s long-absent father, Strawn Wise (Elijah Wood – Come to Daddy), a washed-up illusionist, flies to New Zealand to look after a daughter he’s never met. When they agree to go camping despite neither being the outdoorsy type, this ultimate test in family bonding leads the duo on a string of increasingly absurd and treacherous adventures.
Mononoke The Movie: The Phantom in the Rain – Kenji Nakamura (World Premiere)
Director Kenji Nakamura (Gatchaman Crowds) has revived the intricate palace intrigue and hallucinatory supernatural thrills of his signature work with a brand-new feature film, his most elaborate and opulent adventure yet, and it makes its grand debut at Fantasia. Visually exquisite to an almost overwhelming degree, it gleefully indulges in the iconography and aesthetics of Edo-era Japan, doing so with Pop Art panache, playful anachronism, and percussive pacing, and immediately asserts itself as an essential anime classic.
The Beast Within – Alexander J. Farrel (World Premiere)
The narrative feature debut of esteemed documentary filmmaker Alexander J. Farrel (Refugee), The Beast Within – previously known as What Remains of Us – follows a ten-year-old girl as she starts to question her atypical life in her family’s fortified compound in rural England, ultimately discovering that once a month, her father (Harington) turns into a monster. Co-starring Caoilinn Springall (Stopmotion), Ashleigh Cummings (AMC’s NOS4A2), and James Cosmo (Braveheart).
Here’s the rest of the films announced in the Fantasia Festival 2024’s second wave.
Fantasia Festival 2024 second wave
- The Count of Monte-Cristo – Alexandre de La Patellière and Matthieu Delaporte
- PÁRVULOS – Isaac Ezban
- Scared Shitless! – Vivieno Caldinelli
- Mantra Warrior: The Legend of the Eight Moons – Veerapatra Jinanavin
- Haze – Matthew Fifer
- The Soul Eater – Julien Maury and Alexandre Bustillo
- The Old Man and the Demon Sword – Fábio Powers
- Me and My Victim – Maurane & Billy Pedlow
- Animalia Paradoxa – Niles Atalah
- 100 Yards – Xu Haofeng and Xu Junfeng
- Azrael – E.L Katz
- Brush of the God – Keizo Murase
- Carnage for Christmas – Alice Maio Mackay
- Darkest Miriam – Naomi Jaye
- Don’t Call it a Mystery – Hiroaki Matsuyama
- FAQ – Kim Da-min
- Kryptic – Kourtney Roy
- The Missing – Carl Joseph Papa
- Not Friends – Atta Hemwadee
- Oddity – Damian McCarthy
- Wake Up – RKKS
- Yin Yang Master Zero – Shimako Sato
You can find the first wave of Fantasia Festival titles here.
