Fantastic Fest Announces Second Wave of Programming, Including The Witch

Fantastic Fest Announces Second Wave of Programming

Fantastic Fest has officially announced the second wave of programming for the upcoming Austin-based festival, including the US Premiere of Yorgos Lanthimos’ The Lobster as the opening night film in addition to Ridley Scott’s sci-fi epic The Martian, Ben Wheatley’s High-Rise and Jeremy Saulnier’s Green Room.

“This is a big year for genre cinema. We’re exceptionally proud to honor incredible filmmakers and welcome back some of Fantastic Fest’s favorites,” said Tim League, Fantastic Fest and Alamo Drafthouse CEO/Founder.

In non-film news, Fantastic Fest will be welcoming the Itchy-O Marching Bad to Austin for the festival. A blazing, 32-member aural assault from the darkest depths of Colorado, Itchy-O is a wholly immersive, musical experience on a massive scale. Said festival director Kristen Bell, “We cannot wait for them to unleash their percussive mayhem on our audience as hysteria has a welcome home at Fantastic Fest.”

Emphasizing the “world” in World Premiere, this year’s slate is proud to debut titles from all corners of the globe. Regional hotbeds South Korea (Lee Sang-woo’s Dirty Romance), Denmark (Bo Mikklesen’s What We Become) and the United Kingdom (Gareth Bryn’s The Passing) are dutifully represented while attention is paid to the less familiar markets like Puerto Rico (Angel Manuel Soto’s La Granja). And for the first time in Fantastic Fest history, we’re world premiering a film out of the United Arab Emirates, Majid Al Ansari’s electrifying cat-and-mouse thriller, Zinzana.

You can read the full lineup of newly-announced film titles for Fantastic Fest 2015 below with the final wave of titles to be announced shortly. You can secure your own badge to Fantastic Fest by clicking here.

APRIL AND THE EXTRAORDINARY WORLD

France, Belgium, Canada, 2015

US Premiere, 90 min

Director – Christian Desmares and Franck Ekinci

In an alternate history where Napoleon’s heirs rule France, scientists and scholars have gone missing for years, leaving behind a world deprived of their technological innovations. In this land powered by coal and steam, young April searches for her missing scientist parents.

ASSASSINATION CLASSROOM

Japan, 2015

US Premiere, 110 min

Director – Eiichiro Hasumi

The most heart-warming, touching coming-of-age tale of 2015 just also happens to be the story of how one classroom of kids gets trained as assassins so they can kill their teacher before he destroys Earth.

BASKIN

Turkey, 2015

US Premiere, 97 min

Director – Can Evrenol

It’s a quiet night on the beat for a mobile unit of Turkish police until they’re called out to support a squad encountering trouble in a remote building.

BELLADONNA OF SADNESS

Japan, 1973

Regional Premiere, 86 min

Director – Eiichi Yamamoto

A young and in love Jeanne is attacked by the local lord and makes a pact with the Devil himself in one of the most important rediscoveries of this year. Never before released in the US, this seminal psychedelic masterpiece has been painstakingly restored in 4k digital.

THE BRAND NEW TESTAMENT

France/Belgium/Luxembourg, 2015

North American Premiere, 110 min

Director – Jaco Van Dormael

When Ea gets fed up with her overbearing father (who happens to be God), she decides to follow in her older brother’s footsteps by leaving the house, gathering her own apostles, and writing her own testament.

THE CLUB

Chile, 2015

US Premiere, 98 min

Director – Pablo Larraín

In a secluded Chilean village, four men lead a quiet life, trying to redeem themselves of their past sins. Their existence is threatened by the arrival of a man whose own secret may reveal all which the four have worked to forget.

COZ OV MONI 2

Ghana/Romania, 2014

North American Premiere, 63 min

Directors – King Henry Blackson & FOKN Bois

Beaten, robbed and left for dead, Wanlov and M3NSA are back and looking for revenge. But first, singing. And lunch. Prepare yourself for “the world’s second first pidgin musical”!

DEMON

Poland/Israel, 2015

US Premiere, 94 min

Director – Marcin Wrona

A day after discovering human remains in the backyard of their new home, a man begins experiencing strange things which come to a head on his wedding night.

DIRTY ROMANCE

South Korea, 2015

World Premiere, 94 min

Director – Lee Sang-woo

In Lee Sang-woo’s follow up to last year’s I AM TRASH, Chul-joong is too busy forcing his friend to sexually please his developmentally disabled sister to notice someone may want to actually love her for who she is.

EVOLUTION

France, 2015

US Premiere, 81 min

Director – Lucile Hadzihalilovic

Lucile Hadzihalilovic returns to directing with a surreal tale of a young boy on a remote island who develops a mysterious illness and is subjected to sinister medical treatments.

FEBRUARY

United States/Canada, 2015

US Premiere, 93 min

Director – Osgood Perkins

The lives of two high school students will be linked together when they’re forced to stay at their boarding school over the winter break and an evil presence starts to stalk them.

GREEN ROOM

United States, 2015

US Premiere, 94 min

Director – Jeremy Saulnier

Green Room is a brilliantly crafted and wickedly fun horror-thriller starring Patrick Stewart as a diabolical club owner who squares off against an unsuspecting but resilient young punk band.

GRIDLOCKED

Canada, 2015

World Premiere, 110 min

Director – Allan Ungar

A tactical assault officer is saddled with a hard partying star out to rehabilitate his image -and avoid jail time -in this throwback to the odd couple buddy action flicks of the early ’90s.

HARD TO GET

South Africa, 2014

Regional Premiere, 94 min

Director – Zee Ntuli

Supremely confident ladies man TK may have bitten off more than he can chew when he sets his sights on Skiets, a township beauty with an edge who sets the pair off on a non-stop rollercoaster ride through the local underworld.

HIGH-RISE

United Kingdom, 2016

US Premiere, 118 min

Director – Ben Wheatley

Laing, a young doctor, joins a community in a luxury building in Thatcher’s England, who exile themselves from society and gradually divide into violent tribes.

THE KEEPING ROOM

United States, 2015

Texas Premiere, 95 min

Director – Daniel Barber

In the waning days of the Civil War, three southern women (Brit Marling, Hailee Steinfeld and newcomer Muna Otaru) defend themselves from two Yankees in Daniel Barber’s second film.

KLOVN FOREVER

Denmark, 2015

International Premiere, 90 min

Director – Mikkel Nørgaard

Five years have passed since the first KLOWN, and with their friendship at risk of fracturing forever, Frank must follow Casper to America… with typically disastrous results.

L’AFFAIRE SK1

France, 2014

Texas Premiere, 120 min

Director – Frédéric Tellier

Frederic Tellier’s tight police procedural recreates the events around the decade-long search and trial of “The Beast of the Bastille,”France’s first serial killer, who was tracked down using DNA evidence.

LA GRANJA

Puerto Rico, 2015

World Premiere, 100 min

Director – Angel Manuel Soto

The lives of a midwife, a young boxer, a mute kid and a young couple collide unexpectedly in a story about the desperate pursuit of happiness on the streets of Puerto Rico.

LAZER TEAM

United States, 2015

World Premiere, 93 min

Director – Matt Hullum

When Earth is threatened by an advanced alien race, our only hope lies in four morons, the self-proclaimed “Lazer Team.”

THE LOBSTER

Ireland, Greece, United Kingdom, France, Netherlands, 2015

US Premiere, 119 min

Director – Yorgos Lanthimos

Somewhere in the near future, single people face a choice: Join a program to find a mate in forty-five days or be transformed into an animal.

LUDO

India, 2015

US Premiere, 92 min

Directors – Q & Nikon

Time and space collide when a possessed game grabs hold of two friends eager for a sinful night of sex and drugs in Indian auteur Q’s first foray into horror.

MAN VS SNAKE

United States/Canada/Italy/Japan, 2015

World Premiere, 93 min

Directors – Andrew Seklir and Tim Kinzy

1984. One shiny quarter. 44.5 hours of continuous play. The race to be the first gamer in history to score one BILLION points. Until recently, Timothy McVey (not the terrorist) thought he had -for all these years -held the world record on Nibbler. Note: a Nibbler cabinet will be available in the lobby for the duration of Fantastic Fest for attendees to attempt to break the current world record.

THE MARTIAN

United States, 2015

Special Screening, 120 min

Director – Ridley Scott

Get ready to be blown away by Fox’s latest action-packed 3D adventure, THE MARTIAN starring Matt Damon, Jessica Chastain, Chiwetel Ejiofor and Kristen Wiig with a special screening of the upcoming film directed by Ridley Scott. THE MARTIAN is the story of what happens during a manned mission to Mars, when Astronaut Mark Watney is presumed dead after a fierce storm and left behind by his crew. But Watney has survived and finds himself stranded and alone on the hostile planet. With only meager supplies, he must draw upon his ingenuity, wit and spirit to subsist and find a way to signal to Earth that he is alive. Millions of miles away, NASA and a team of international scientists work tirelessly to bring “the Martian”home, while his crewmates concurrently plot a daring, if not impossible rescue mission.

MEN AND CHICKEN

Denmark, 2015

US Premiere, 100 min

Director – Anders Thomas Jensen

Mads Mikkelsen as only his longtime absurdist Danish collaborator Anders Thomas Jensen could conceive, a chronic masturbator with a hair-trigger temper, desperately searches for his true identity.

THE MIND’S EYE

United States, 2015

US Premiere, 87 min

Director – Joe Begos

On the heels of his Fantastic Fest debut ALMOST HUMAN, Joe Begos returns with a classic battle of good versus evil. A drifter with suppressed psychic powers must learn to unleash them to save the woman he loves.

THE MISSING GIRL

United States, 2015

US Premiere, 89 min

Director – A.D.Calvo

Mort, a lonely and disillusioned owner of a comic book shop, has fallen for his new employee Ellen, a smart, aspiring graphic novelist. A dark past and a missing girl, however, will complicate their story more than anyone can imagine.

THE PASSING

United Kingdom, 2015

World Premiere, 87 min

Director – Gareth Bryn

After their car is driven off the road and crashed into a river, a young couple on the run is taken in by a simple man living with his secrets in his isolated home.

RABID DOGS

France, 2015

US Premiere,99 min

Director – Eric Hannezo

Four violent criminals escaping a robbery take a man, an ailing child and a young woman on a nightmarish road trip in this remake of Mario Bava’s near-lost Euro-crime nasty.

THE RIVER

Canada/Laos, 2015

US Premiere, 88 min

Director – Jamie Dagg

John, a volunteer doctor, finds himself on the run in a strange country when he tries to stop the rape of a drunk girl at the hands of an Australian man.

TOO LATE

United States, 2015

Regional Premiere, 107 min

Director – Dennis Hauck

A troubled private eye trawls through the belly of Los Angeles looking for a missing young woman, slowly revealing a careful web of intrigue, lies and connections.

WHAT WE BECOME

Denmark, 2015

World Premiere, 85 min

Director – Bo Mikkelsen

An idyllic suburban summer is shattered with the outbreak of an unexplained disease. With residents forced into quarantine with no explanation, the situation quickly spirals out of control.

THE WITCH

Canada/United States, 2015

Texas Premiere, 90 min

Director – Robert Eggers

Sixty years before the Salem witch trials, a Puritan moves his family away from civilization to a homestead which shares its borders with inescapable evil.

YAKUZA APOCALYPSE

Japan, 2015

Texas Premiere, 115 min

Director – Takashi Miike

After a yakuza vampire boss is struck down, his most loyal disciple takes it upon himself to avenge his mentor’s death and eliminate the assassins and their giant plush frog leader in Miike’s classic yakuza tale turned inside out.

ZINZANA

United Arab Emirates, Jordan, 2015

World Premiere, 91 min

Director – Majid Al Ansari

Talal wakes up in a cell with no memory of the night before with no I.D. and no escape. Nothing can prepare him, however, for the arrival of a brilliant psychopath and the games he wants to play.