Our favorite film festival in the world has just announced its second wave of titles, and we’re once again left sobbing with joy at the cinematic splendors to come. Below are 35 more films (to add to the 23 already announced in the first wave) set to thrill, disgust, entertain and titillate audiences in Austin next month, and they’re once again a mix of the highly anticipated and the utterly unknown.
Ridley Scott’s The Martian and Yorgos Lanthimos’ The Lobster will be high on many people’s lists, but for me it’s all about the new films from Ben Wheatley and Jeremy Saulnier. The Kill List director is bringing his adaptation of J.G. Ballard’s High-Rise, and the man behind Blue Ruin is treating fest-goers to his follow up, The Green Room. Both of these are U.S. premieres. I’ve only seen a few of the titles below, but if you attend the fest I have to insist you experience the pure Japanese pleasure that is Assassination Classroom and the nightmare on the prairie that is The Witch.
In addition to the films films films Fantastic Fest is also delivering something of a sonic spectacular this year with a performance from Itchy-O. The experience is described as “a blazing, 32-member aural assault from the darkest depths of Colorado” and “a wholly immersive, musical experience on a massive scale.” So obviously that will be on our schedule too.
Keep reading for a look at 35 more films set to play this year’s fest!
Fantastic Fest 2015 runs September 24th to October 1st.
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APRIL AND THE EXTRAORDINARY WORLD
France, Belgium, Canada, 2015 – US Premiere, 90 min – Director – Christian Desmares and Franck Ekinci
In an alternate history where Napoleon’s heirs rule France, scientists and scholars have gone missing for years, leaving behind a world deprived of their technological innovations. In this land powered by coal and steam, young April searches for her missing scientist parents.
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ASSASSINATION CLASSROOM
Japan, 2015 – US Premiere, 110 min – Director – Eiichiro Hasumi
The most heart-warming, touching coming-of-age tale of 2015 just also happens to be the story of how one classroom of kids gets trained as assassins so they can kill their teacher before he destroys Earth.
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BASKIN
Turkey, 2015 – US Premiere, 97 min – Director – Can Evrenol
It’s a quiet night on the beat for a mobile unit of Turkish police until they’re called out to support a squad encountering trouble in a remote building.
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BELLADONNA OF SADNESS
Japan, 1973 – Regional Premiere, 86 min – Director – Eiichi Yamamoto
A young and in love Jeanne is attacked by the local lord and makes a pact with the Devil himself in one of the most important rediscoveries of this year. Never before released in the US, this seminal psychedelic masterpiece has been painstakingly restored in 4k digital.
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THE BRAND NEW TESTAMENT
France/Belgium/Luxembourg, 2015 – North American Premiere, 110 min – Director – Jaco Van Dormael
When Ea gets fed up with her overbearing father (who happens to be God), she decides to follow in her older brother’s footsteps by leaving the house, gathering her own apostles, and writing her own testament.
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THE CLUB
Chile, 2015 – US Premiere, 98 min – Director – Pablo Larraín
In a secluded Chilean village, four men lead a quiet life, trying to redeem themselves of their past sins. Their existence is threatened by the arrival of a man whose own secret may reveal all which the four have worked to forget.
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COZ OV MONI 2
Ghana/Romania, 2014 – North American Premiere, 63 min – Directors – King Henry Blackson & FOKN Bois
Beaten, robbed and left for dead, Wanlov and M3NSA are back and looking for revenge. But first, singing. And lunch. Prepare yourself for “the world’s second first pidgin musical”!
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DEMON
Poland/Israel, 2015 – US Premiere, 94 min – Director – Marcin Wrona
A day after discovering human remains in the backyard of their new home, a man begins experiencing strange things which come to a head on his wedding night.
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DIRTY ROMANCE
South Korea, 2015 – World Premiere, 94 min – Director – Lee Sang-woo
In Lee Sang-woo’s follow up to last year’s I AM TRASH, Chul-joong is too busy forcing his friend to sexually please his developmentally disabled sister to notice someone may want to actually love her for who she is.
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EVOLUTION
France, 2015 – US Premiere, 81 min – Director – Lucile Hadzihalilovic
Lucile Hadzihalilovic returns to directing with a surreal tale of a young boy on a remote island who develops a mysterious illness and is subjected to sinister medical treatments.
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FEBRUARY
United States/Canada, 2015 – US Premiere, 93 min – Director – Osgood Perkins
The lives of two high school students will be linked together when they’re forced to stay at their boarding school over the winter break and an evil presence starts to stalk them.
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GREEN ROOM
United States, 2015 – US Premiere, 94 min – Director – Jeremy Saulnier
Green Room is a brilliantly crafted and wickedly fun horror-thriller starring Patrick Stewart as a diabolical club owner who squares off against an unsuspecting but resilient young punk band.
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GRIDLOCKED
Canada, 2015 – World Premiere, 110 min – Director – Allan Ungar
A tactical assault officer is saddled with a hard partying star out to rehabilitate his image -and avoid jail time -in this throwback to the odd couple buddy action flicks of the early’90s.
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HARD TO GET
South Africa, 2014 – Regional Premiere, 94 min – Director – Zee Ntuli
Supremely confident ladies man TK may have bitten off more than he can chew when he sets his sights on Skiets, a township beauty with an edge who sets the pair off on a non-stop rollercoaster ride through the local underworld.
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HIGH-RISE
United Kingdom, 2016 – US Premiere, 118 min – Director – Ben Wheatley
Laing, a young doctor, joins a community in a luxury building in Thatcher’s England, who exile themselves from society and gradually divide into violent tribes.
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THE KEEPING ROOM
United States, 2015 – Texas Premiere, 95 min – Director – Daniel Barber
In the waning days of the Civil War, three southern women (Brit Marling, Hailee Steinfeld and newcomer Muna Otaru) defend themselves from two Yankees in Daniel Barber’s second film.
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KLOVN FOREVER
Denmark, 2015 – International Premiere, 90 min – Director – Mikkel Nørgaard
Five years have passed since the first KLOWN, and with their friendship at risk of fracturing forever, Frank must follow Casper to America… with typically disastrous results.
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L’AFFAIRE SK1
France, 2014 – Texas Premiere, 120 min – Director – Frédéric Tellier
Frederic Tellier’s tight police procedural recreates the events around the decade-long search and trial of “The Beast of the Bastille,”France’s first serial killer, who was tracked down using DNA evidence.
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LA GRANJA
Puerto Rico, 2015 – World Premiere, 100 min – Director – Angel Manuel Soto
The lives of a midwife, a young boxer, a mute kid and a young couple collide unexpectedly in a story about the desperate pursuit of happiness on the streets of Puerto Rico.
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LAZER TEAM
United States, 2015 – World Premiere, 93 min – Director – Matt Hullum
When Earth is threatened by an advanced alien race, our only hope lies in four morons, the self-proclaimed “Lazer Team.”
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THE LOBSTER
Ireland, Greece, United Kingdom, France, Netherlands, 2015 – US Premiere, 119 min – Director – Yorgos Lanthimos
Somewhere in the near future, single people face a choice: Join a program to find a mate in forty-five days or be transformed into an animal.
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LUDO
India, 2015 – US Premiere, 92 min – Directors – Q & Nikon
Time and space collide when a possessed game grabs hold of two friends eager for a sinful night of sex and drugs in Indian auteur Q’s first foray into horror.
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MAN VS SNAKE
United States/Canada/Italy/Japan, 2015 – World Premiere, 93 min – Directors – Andrew Seklir and Tim Kinzy
1984. One shiny quarter. 44.5 hours of continuous play. The race to be the first gamer in history to score one BILLION points. Until recently, Timothy McVey (not the terrorist) thought he had -for all these years -held the world record on Nibbler. Note: a Nibbler cabinet will be available in the lobby for the duration of Fantastic Fest for attendees to attempt to break the current world record.
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THE MARTIAN
United States, 2015 – Special Screening, 120 min – Director – Ridley Scott
Get ready to be blown away by Fox’s latest action-packed 3D adventure, THE MARTIAN starring Matt Damon, Jessica Chastain, Chiwetel Ejiofor and Kristen Wiig with a special screening of the upcoming film directed by Ridley Scott. THE MARTIAN is the story of what happens during a manned mission to Mars, when Astronaut Mark Watney is presumed dead after a fierce storm and left behind by his crew. But Watney has survived and finds himself stranded and alone on the hostile planet. With only meager supplies, he must draw upon his ingenuity, wit and spirit to subsist and find a way to signal to Earth that he is alive. Millions of miles away, NASA and a team of international scientists work tirelessly to bring “the Martian”home, while his crewmates concurrently plot a daring, if not impossible rescue mission.
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MEN AND CHICKEN
Denmark, 2015 – US Premiere, 100 min – Director – Anders Thomas Jensen
Mads Mikkelsen as only his longtime absurdist Danish collaborator Anders Thomas Jensen could conceive, a chronic masturbator with a hair-trigger temper, desperately searches for his true identity.
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THE MIND’S EYE
United States, 2015 – US Premiere, 87 min – Director – Joe Begos
On the heels of his Fantastic Fest debut ALMOST HUMAN, Joe Begos returns with a classic battle of good versus evil. A drifter with suppressed psychic powers must learn to unleash them to save the woman he loves.
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THE MISSING GIRL
United States, 2015 – US Premiere, 89 min – Director – A.D.Calvo
Mort, a lonely and disillusioned owner of a comic book shop, has fallen for his new employee Ellen, a smart, aspiring graphic novelist. A dark past and a missing girl, however, will complicate their story more than anyone can imagine.
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THE PASSING
United Kingdom, 2015 – World Premiere, 87 min – Director – Gareth Bryn
After their car is driven off the road and crashed into a river, a young couple on the run is taken in by a simple man living with his secrets in his isolated home.
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RABID DOGS
France, 2015 – US Premiere,99 min – Director – Eric Hannezo
Four violent criminals escaping a robbery take a man, an ailing child and a young woman on a nightmarish road trip in this remake of Mario Bava’s near-lost Euro-crime nasty.
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THE RIVER
Canada/Laos, 2015 – US Premiere, 88 min – Director – Jamie Dagg
John, a volunteer doctor, finds himself on the run in a strange country when he tries to stop the rape of a drunk girl at the hands of an Australian man.
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TOO LATE
United States, 2015 – Regional Premiere, 107 min – Director – Dennis Hauck
A troubled private eye trawls through the belly of Los Angeles looking for a missing young woman, slowly revealing a careful web of intrigue, lies and connections.
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WHAT WE BECOME
Denmark, 2015 – World Premiere, 85 min – Director – Bo Mikkelsen
An idyllic suburban summer is shattered with the outbreak of an unexplained disease. With residents forced into quarantine with no explanation, the situation quickly spirals out of control.
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THE WITCH
Canada/United States, 2015 – Texas Premiere, 90 min – Director – Robert Eggers
Sixty years before the Salem witch trials, a Puritan moves his family away from civilization to a homestead which shares its borders with inescapable evil.
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YAKUZA APOCALYPSE
Japan, 2015 – Texas Premiere, 115 min – Director – Takashi Miike
After a yakuza vampire boss is struck down, his most loyal disciple takes it upon himself to avenge his mentor’s death and eliminate the assassins and their giant plush frog leader in Miike’s classic yakuza tale turned inside out.
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ZINZANA
United Arab Emirates, Jordan, 2015 – World Premiere, 91 min – Director – Majid Al Ansari
Talal wakes up in a cell with no memory of the night before with no I.D. and no escape. Nothing can prepare him, however, for the arrival of a brilliant psychopath and the games he wants to play.
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Fantastic Fest 2015 runs September 24th to October 1st.
Related Topics: Fantastic Fest
