World premieres of Jayro Bustamante’s Rita and the Adams Family’s Hell Hole are among the first wave of the 28th edition of Fantasia International Film Festival in Montreal running July 18-August 4.
Rita marks Bustamante’s follow-up to 2019 Venice Giornate degli Autori winner and Guatemalan Oscar submission La Llorona. It follows an abused teenage girl’s attempted escape from a government safe house and is inspired by the true story of a deadly orphanage fire in Guatemala.
Hell Hole hails from the filmmaking family behind Hellbender and Where The Devil Roams and centres on an American-led fracking crew that uncovers a living French soldier frozen in time from a Napoleonic campaign, whose body hosts a parasitic monster.
John Adams and Toby Poser co-directed the Shudder Original Film and co-wrote with Lulu Adams.
Yellow Veil handles international sales on Hell Hole, and also represents global sales on Elric Kane’s dating app horror The Dead Thing, which will receive its world premiere in Fantasia.
The line-up includes world premiere of Chuck Russell’s Witchboard, about a man who seeks help from a mysterious occult expert after his fiancée is exposed to an ancient spirit through a Wiccan artifact.
Also receiving its first outing is Estonia-based Miguel Llansó’s trippy transhumanist sci-fi Infinite Summer, about friends on a summer vacation who try out a fateful meditation app.
Hwang Wook’s South Korean horror dark comedy Mash Ville and YouTube creator Chris Stuckmann’s Shelby Oaks, presented by Mike Flanagan, also get their world premieres. Lucia Penzo’s 2023 San Sebastian selection Electrophilia gets its North American premiere.
Screenings will take place at Concordia Hall and J.A. de Sève cinemas, with additional screens and events at Montreal’s Cinémathèque québécoise and Cinéma du Musée. Programming will include workshops and launch events.
The full line-up will be unveiled on July 3.
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