Interview:
Lisa Dreyer,
Festival Director,
Annick Mahnert,
Director of Programming,
Fantastic Fest
Fantastic Fest will celebrate 20 years of bringing the best in studio and independent genre films to Austin when this year’s edition kicks off Sept. 18 at the Alamo South Lamar. The festival opens Sept. 18 with director Johannes Roberts’ “chimp gone wild” thriller Primate and closes Sept. 25 with the supernatural chiller Whistle, written by former Austinite Owen Egerton. World premieres include Ben Wheatley’s Bulk, Bryan Bertino’s Vicious, Lil Rel Howery’s directorial debut Haunted Heist, and the Justin Long thrillers Coyote and Night Patrol. Franchise world premieres include Black Phone 2, Deathgasam 2: Goremageddon, Sisu: Road to Revenge, The Strangers - Chapter 2, V/H/S Halloween, and three episodes of Season 2 of The Creep Tales. Films made in Austin include Todd Rohal’s dark comedy Fuck My Son! and John Spottswood Moore’s public access TV documentary When We Were Live. Other notable selections include Radu Jude’s Dracula, Steven Kostanski’s remake of Deathstalker, the Rose Byrne drama If I Had Legs I’d Kick You, the Paper Street Pictures-produced horror yarn Shelby Oaks, and Oliver Laxe’s Sirāt. Restorations include Bride of Re-Animator, Chocolate, Cruel Jaws, and Freaked. There will be 20th anniversary shorts packages devoted to Fantastic Fest alums and Indian genre cinema as well as such tradition programs as Fantastic Shorts, Drawn and Quartered, and Shorts with Legs. Master Pancake returns to mock the 1987 version of Masters of the Universe. Fantastic Fest will hold four Secret Screenings destined to generate headlines. Fantastic Fest will also launch its inaugural Fantastic Pitches filmmaker competition; host a The Masters Of Horror 20th anniversary panel with Mick Garris, Joe Dante, Don Coscarelli, and Ernest Dickerson; and present the Golden Hornet-American Film Genre Archive collaboration Cinema Recomposed – Year One, a screening of Max Fleischer animated shorts set to new scores written by seven young composers and performed live. Attendees can also expect such festival staples as the Fantastic Feud and the Fantastic Debates.
Aired: Sept. 10, 2025. Web sites: http://fantasticfest.com/ https://www.facebook.com/fantasticfest |
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