Born Of Woman 2020

Join us after the screening at 7:30pm for a live Q&A Ariane Boukerche (THEY SALIVATE), Lorraine Caffery (THE ROUGAROU), Anna Chazelle (NARROW), Sabine Ehrl (F FOR FREAKS), Ashley George (DIABLA), Rioghnach Ni Ghrioghair (BREAK US), Faye Jackson (SNOWFLAKES), Bridget Moloney (BLOCKS) and Mercedes Bryce Morgan (COME F*CK MY ROBOT)

Fantasia’s annual showcase of intimate, auteur genre visions returns with nine extraordinary works from an array of international talents who will positively floor you.

Germany brings us Sabine Ehrl’s brilliant dystopian oddity F FOR FREAKS (North American Premiere), set in a uniquely unpleasant future world populated by the very tall and very small, the former regularly hunting the latter. In the midst of this, a desperately ill woman in her seventies hires a group of mercenaries to bring her across town in order to procure a new lung. Winner of five awards on the international festival circuit.

Ireland’s Rioghnach Ni Ghrioghair delivers a powerful interpersonal pistol whipping with BREAK US (Canadian Premiere), a film that uses a bank robbery as a channel for the breaking of something else.

Visionary British filmmaker Faye Jackson (THE OLD WOMAN WHO HID HER FEAR UNDER THE STAIRS) returns to the Born of Woman showcase – and has another work in this year’s Small Gauge Trauma lineup – with the extraordinary SNOWFLAKES (Canadian Premiere). A singular sci-fi/drama about the cruelties of deportation and prejudice, set in a UK detention center, where things take a hard turn into the fantastical as a group of people are about to be forcibly deported to Jamaica.

The U.S.A. brings us four. Based on an actual Craigslist’s post, Mercedes Bryce Morgan’s COME F*CK MY ROBOT (World Premiere) depicts a shy teen virgin answering an inventor’s call for volunteers to sleep with a prototype sex robot, finding himself in a distinctly uncomfortable position – more so than one may have already expected from the situation. A funny, smart, and original film about consent that simultaneously entertains and confronts.

The impressive directorial debut of actor Anna Chazelle (LA-LA LAND, FIRST MAN), who also stars, NARROW (World Premiere) is a tense sci-fi/horror thriller set against a recently annihilated world, replete with monsters both figurative and very much literal.

Bridget Moloney’s inspired Sundance head-turner BLOCKS (International Premiere) is the subversive comic tale of a mother who inexplicably begins vomiting up toy blocks, realizing them to be ideal tools for getting some private space to herself. Stars Claire Coffee and Mark Webber.

After hearing a story about a folkloric Louisiana werewolf, a 12-year-old girl grows determined to put an end to its violence in Lorraine Caffery’s gut-wrenching THE ROUGAROU (International Premiere). Strikingly directed and brilliantly performed, it’s an addressment of inner-city brutality that will stay with you.

From Mexico, Ashley George’s potent DIABLA (Canadian Premiere) sees a 17-year-old assault survivor embracing local witch culture to attain revenge through her unrealized female power. It’s a melancholically scorching work, rich in character and expressive detail, told with a tone of fantastical social realism that lands with tremendous impact.

French filmmaker Ariane Boukerche’s sensuously transgressive THEY SALIVATE (Canadian Premiere) is an aesthetically vivid journey into intimacy most surreal. It’s a definitively mouth-watering affair, a Cronenbergian odyssey of kink and revelation that demands to be experienced on its own terms. – Mitch Davis