Small Gauge Trauma 2023

Fantasia’s international showcase of cutting-edge genre works is back with ten films from five countries that positively astonish. Get ready to COVER YOUR EARS (Canadian Premiere) as Sweden’s Oskar Johansson delivers a nightmarish film that sweats with invention and dread. Spain haunts with Goya nominee Nacho Solana’s THERE ARE NO GHOSTS (Canadian Premiere), a moving chiller that brings a compassionate perspective to a different kind of ghost hunting tale. The UK blasts the roof off with two. In Emily Greenwood’s STOP DEAD (Canadian Premiere), a pair of exhausted cops come across a girl shuffling on a remote road. By the time they understand why she’s terrified to stop moving, it may be too late for any of them. THE NOLBERTO METHOD (World Premiere), from student Academy Award winner David Winstone, is a smart burst of straight-faced absurdism in which a depressed man visits a new therapist and finds his fate crossed with that of a mysterious mollusk.

The USA comes ripping with four. Andrew Fuchs’s THE PUPPET MAN (World Premiere) is one of the most haunting films this side of oblivion, a depiction of trauma and grief processed through art that will suck the breath from your lungs. Zoey Martinson’s INCOMPLETE (Canadian Premiere) nails one of the most compelling setups for a horror narrative that we’ve seen in some time: a young man under house arrest – in a haunted house. A one-night stand veers into hellish, unexpected places in Bill Neil’s stunningly executed queer horror fever dream ROLEPLAY (Canadian Premiere). In Michael Gabriele’s inventive meta slasher reworking GET AWAY (Canadian Premiere), a group of friends hit a desert vacation house where they find a VHS tape that reveals a few too many coincidences for comfort.

France brings a provocative pair that rank among this year’s best. A lonely 10-year-old girl believes herself to be a vampire and longs to drink the blood of a neighborhood boy in Rodrigue Huart’s devastating TRANSYLVANIE (World Premiere), a powerful take on contemporary vampire folklore and childhood alienation. Subversive, sensorial and sensuous in transgressively unorthodox ways, Mael Le Mée’s LA MACHINE D’ALEX (Canadian Premiere), while visually as grotesque as can be, is a deeply compassionate journey into self-discovery and liberation, a beautiful and breathtaking film. – Mitch Davis