The Fantasia International Film Festival will be celebrating its 25th edition once again as a virtual event accessible to audiences across Canada, with a dynamic program of scheduled screenings and premieres, panels, and workshops running from August 5 through August 25, 2021, once again using the leading-edge platform created by Festival Scope and Shift72, a press release announced this morning.
Fantasia will be opening its upcoming edition with the World Premiere of a major Québécois genre feature – Julien Knafo’s Brain Freeze, covered here in Bloody Disgusting a handful of times over the past year.
“Brain Freeze is about an exclusive golf club that hires a biotech company to deploy fertilizer that melts the snow so members can enjoy 18 holes all year round.
“When the treatment contaminates the local water supply and turns most of the locals into zombies, teenage André (Iani Bédard) is left to fend for himself and his baby sister Annie.”
Explains the press release: “First pitched at Frontières, the festival’s world-renowned international co-production market, the film is a smart and stylish zombie-comedy that slyly comments on social concerns both domestic and universal, telling the tale of an environmental disaster that leads to a fast-spreading virus ravaging a wealthy gated community off the island of Montreal.
“Equally gorgeous as it is bloody, Brain Freeze presents a clever take on corporate greed, the growing rift between the haves and have-nots and a government in crisis that uses a zombie outbreak to express its truth and succeeds at being both a charming horror comedy, coming-of-age tale, and a story of unexpected friendship in hazardous times.”
“Brain Freeze joins the ranks of recently-released cinema that holds an eerie mirror up to our collective experience even though scripted and shot pre-pandemic,” adds the release. “While production on the winter-set chiller was abruptly halted four days before completion following Quebec’s lockdown, shooting was miraculously able to wrap the following summer.”
The film will see theatrical release throughout Canada on August 13th from Filmoption International.
*As the summer approaches, the festival will be following advice from local health authorities, with the possibility of also adding a range of flagship physical events to the lineup.
