Film Festivals

Fantastic Fest announced the second wave of films, including the US Premiere of Yorgos Lanthimos’ THE LOBSTER as the opening night film. Joining THE LOBSTER is a “dazzling” array of the year’s most anticipated genre films from directors including Ridley Scott’s sci-fi epic THE MARTIAN, Ben Wheatley’s HIGH-RISE and Jeremy Saulnier’s GREEN ROOM. The lineup also includes World Premieres from South Korea (Lee Sang-woo’s DIRTY ROMANCE), Denmark (Bo Mikklesen’s WHAT WE BECOME), United Kingdom (Gareth Bryn’s THE PASSING) and Puerto Rico (Angel Manuel Soto’s LA GRANJA). And for the first time in Fantastic Fest history, the festival is world premiering a film out of the United Arab Emirates, Majid Al Ansari’s electrifying cat-and-mouse thriller, ZINZANA. See below for the full lineup of newly announced film titles for Fantastic Fest 2015. 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. RIVER Canada/Laos, 2015 US Premiere, 88 min Director – Jamie M. Dagg In the south of Laos, an American volunteer doctor becomes a fugitive after he intervenes in the sexual assault of a young woman. When the assailant’s body is pulled from the Mekong River, things quickly spiral out of control. 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.

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