Fantasia International Film Festival — A–Z of films

Any film that has both a fight director and a dance choreographer is probably doing something right.

The technical work is very good but more than matched only by the quality of the acting.

Erick Zonca is less interested in solving the mystery than in exploring the damaged psyches of Visconti and Bellaile.

An astonishing debut.

A hilarious tribute to the best-loved cliches of the genre.

Biafra brings real energy and passion to the job, helping to make this a film that’s consistently gripping and never gets dry even when dealing with legal details.

The narrative is fairly predictable and makes extensive use of well established western tropes but there's still an enjoyable adventure at its core.

One of the most startlingly erotic mass market films of its era.

Affecting interview content builds into a sweet picture of two young people who briefly seemed to have the world at their feet.

Screenwriter Isa Mazzei is a former camgirl herself and it shows in the film’s focus on the business side of proceedings, but director Daniel Goldhaber extends her work in a much stranger direction.

Catcalls is billed as horror but will be, for many viewers, more of an antidote to a horror that's part of day to day life.

Chained For Life finds a rich vein of comedy in the awfulness of many people's reactions to disability.

Some of the animation here is beautiful, especially when we're in watery spaces with things floating around.

The most ambitious, assured and accomplished work to date from Xavier Gens, Cold Skin is terrifying in places and heartbreaking in others.

There's a lot packed into Justin P Lange's downbeat horror fable.

It's never entirely clear how much of what is happening might be visible to others and how much exists in the shared imaginary between mother and child.

A simple idea brilliantly rendered.

Takashi Yamazaki’s brilliantly realised fantasy universe, based on the manga by Ryôhei Saigan, will thrill fans of fantasy animé and Japanese mythology.

Director Ida Jogler uses fantastic elements to put across the violence inherent in her protagonist's gaze.

Gremlins was a success because it understood completely what child audiences really want - cheerful mischief, irreverent violence and things that make you go 'ewwww!'

Occasional lapses into sentiment are balanced by the absurdity of the situations in which the band find themselves, the script's dry wit and the energy of the music.

Essential viewing for anyone with a serious interest in the history of the genre.

Elsalihie is good in the central role, conveying not just terror but the sense of despair that comes from knowing there's nowhere to run.

If you’ve never seen a proper kung fu film, this is great place to start, and if you’re already a fan you have no excuse not to seek this one out.

It's essentially a simple premise but the delivery is a thing of beauty.

Though set in the US, Lupkin's film makes allusions to Northern European folklore.

This is a woozily shot, dislocating experience that in its best moments generates the sort of tense mental anxiety that Lynne Ramsay has made her calling card.

The film only lives up to about 80% of the promise whereas I wanted 150%.

There are the makings of a great film here but too much time is spent telling the story and not enough showing it.

An impressive score and imaginative visuals.

Van Dammen has bitten off much more than he can chew and lacks the experience to spit some of it out, but it's largely his ambition that makes things interesting.

Director Jeon Go-Woon keeps the camera close to emphasise cramped conditions and the emotional pressures they generate.

Several films have already touched on this subject but few have done so with the pace and fury of Red's work, which never lets its bleak social realism overwhelm the punchy thriller at its core.

Fabiula Nascimento is superb as the frustrated Odete.

Expanding on the notion of loneliness and the importance of familiar places in our lives, Rocher brings in themes about emotional dependency, possessiveness and the ways we define our identities in relation to others.

Nose Nose Nose Eyes! is likely to make most viewers look away and some leave the room.

Dumisa proves very capable when it comes to building suspense, yet, thanks to sterling work by Ismael Essop, is able to step back from time to time to remind us that we're watching not mere cyphers but human beings.

Sara Kestelman takes a simply drawn character and gives her depth and complexity.

Director Anthony Scott Burns delivers some real chills but it's the positive aspect of the film, the sense that there's still room for joy in these difficult lives, that makes them so potent.

This Korean action thriller is cut from the same sort of cloth as that favoured by Johnnie To and, if it's not quite up there with the Hong Kong great's best, it's still got plenty of style.

I found myself quickly gripped by Parallel.

Highly imaginative and definitely original, Penguin Highway will fill viewers of all ages with wonder.

The screen may be smaller, but the rules are much the same as they always were.

This film is likely to be adored by many cancer patients themselves, capturing exactly the kind of black humour one encounters on cancer wards.

Without a doubt, Pesce is one of the most exciting young directors to emerge in recent years.

The standout is Byrd, who delivers compelling work throughout.

The film is expertly performed.

Horror has taken us to cabins in the woods many times before, but it has rarely done so with such spirit.

For all its playful trappings, this is at heart a survival film.

For most of its length, RokuRoku feels like an anthology film, a series of bizarre incidents in which puny humans come up against supernatural foes, but if you pay attention you'll begin to notice that all these tales are linked.

The plot here is simple, with room for just a few snappy twists, but what makes the film work is the combination of its very deliberate style and the supreme confidence of its delivery.

Hearing the horror before we see it creates a stretch of suspense that is always building to a terrifying reveal, and it pays off well.

Where Mosafir is strongest is in his use of wide open spaces, where excellent sound design contributes to a sense of exposure and uncertainty.

The film - co-written by Sev Ohanian - is not just clever in the way that it uses familiar programs and the Windows and Apple Mac environments but also in the way it triggers familiar emotions.

The performances that director Issa López gets out of the children, most of whom are new to acting, are extraordinary.

They're not just undead, they're gloriously larger than life.

Matsuoka’s emotionally complicated performance anchors the film and keeps Yoshika interesting even at her most self-centred or self-abasing.

This film makes it clear that lemur versus nature is the future.

There are just too many movie references and homage to the likes of David Lynch in this noirish thriller to make it anything other than an over-derivative exercise in style over substance.

The charismatic Kim Sang-Kyung tends to dominate scenes even when playing a downbeat character, but Kim Kang-woo is impressive in the quieter role of the troubled Park.

Styled like the Ladybird Book of Cronenberg.

Kjersti Helen Rasmussen's short film is grown up science fiction, quietly logical.

There's an alertness here to the dynamics of domestic abuse that gives the film depth.

Who's Who In Mycology is one of those short films that's so richly imagined that it feels like a fragment of a much bigger work.

Though seasoned viewers will see these twists coming, Kim deftly shifts the tone if her performance along with them to keep us guessing.