North American premiere of For Love's Sake to open Fantasia

Takashi Miike’s For Love’s Sake [pictured], which screened at this year’s Cannes, will open the 16th edition of Montreal’s Fantasia International Film Festival.

Miike’s musical comedy receives its North American premiere at the festival, one of over 30 world, international or North American premieres taking place at this year’s edition. Other premieres include the previously announced Black’s Game from Oskar Thor Axelsson (North American), Eron Sheean’s Errors Of The Human Body (world) and Olivier Abbou’s Yes We Can (international), as well as the newly announced North American premiere of Steffen Haars and Flip Van der Kuil’s sequel New Kids Nitro and the world premiere of Noboru Iguchi’s Dead Sushi.

This year’s festival will also feature over 30 Canadian premieres, including Boris Rodriguez’s Tribeca hit Eddie: The Sleepwalking Cannibal, Magnus Martens’ Jackpot, Tom Kingsley and Will Sharpe’s BAFTA-nominated Black Pond and Jon Wright’s Grabbers.

Chris Butler’s ParaNorman - the second feature from animation studio Laika, following the Oscar-nominated Coraline - will receive its Canadian premiere as the official closing film on August 7.

Renowned film scholar David Bordwell will receive a special Lifetime Excellence Award at this year’s edition, where he will also host a master class about Hong Kong cinema and its effect on international cinema, one of several panels and conferences taking place over the three-week event.

Fantasia will also celebrate the work Jennifer Lynch with the world premiere of Chained and the Quebec premiere of documentary Despite The Gods, which followed her during the making of ambitious Bollywood film Hisss. Lynch will be on hand to host both films at the festival.

Strands at this year’s edition include the return of Documentaries From The Edge (now expanded to ten titles, including the world premiere of Eric Walter’s My Amityville Horror), a joint spotlight on Danish and Norwegian cinema and a new permanent section in the form of AXIS, which celebrates international animation cinema and involves the debut of The Satoshi Kon Award for Achievement in Animation.

Fantasia will also host a joint restrospective series to mark the centennial of Japan’s oldest studio Nikkatsu, with the Festival du Nouveau Cinema.

As previously announced, a record number of guests will be attending the festival, among them 125 directors, producers and actors who will be on hand to present their film’s premiere, including Michael Biehn, Mark Hamill, Noboru Iguchi, David Wu, Michael Eklund and Casper Van Dien.

With the introduction of the Fantasia Industry Rendez-Vous, that involves the inaugural Frontières International Co-Production Market, the festival will welcome over 300 members of the film industry in total, with more than 250 of them coming during the July 26-29 Rendez-Vous weekend.

Special events at this year’s edition include a series of rare 35mm French-dubbed Italian exploitation films, presented by DJ XL5, and the world premiere launch of the touring art show If They Came From Within: An Alternative History Of Canadian Horror, a project which invited Canada’s leading genre filmmakers to make up projects that could have happened.

Fantasia International Film Festival runs July 19-August 9 at the Concordia Hall Theatre in Montreal, Canada. To see the full line up, visit its website.