Volume 28, Issue 6 / June 2024

Fantasia International Film Festival, 2023

Offscreen returns with our annual full coverage of our favorite festival of the year, The Fantasia International Film Festival. As our custom of late the issue posts shortly before the launch of the new 2024 edition. The issue starts with two festival coverages. My report focuses on a grouping of films that I've linked together around variations on the theme the "monster within." A second focus is a sampling of some of my favorite of the retrospective screenings. Frédéric St-Hilaire's report muses on Fantasia's evolving identity while moving on to a selection of the Asian highlights of 2023. Up next is a video (Zoom) interview with the irrepressible filmmaking family, John Adams, Lulu Adams, Zelda Adams, and Tony Poser, who were in Montreal to present their latest hand-crafted film, Where the Devil Roams. The devil is front and center in Randolph Jordan's report which groups together a selection of films featuring the devil. The final piece is J. Simpson's report on the 2024 edition of the Portland Horror Film Festival. While this piece is not about Fantasia, Simpons' enthusiastic description of the festival as open-hearted and passionate toward all things horror and weird suggests a kinship with Fantasia. Another Fantasia 2023 film covered in Offscreen is the horror comedy Apocalypse Clown by Canadian born filmmaker George Kane. David Hanley's interview with George Kane appeared in an our Irish Film Issue. (Donato Totaro, ed.)