It's alive! Fantasia Festival made a grand in-person return — but not without pandemic scares

At this year's Fantasia International Film Festival, industry onlookers were buzzing, audiences were lined up around blocks and crowds were roaring their approval. After two editions of the horror and genre-focused festival that were held either entirely online or presented in hybrid form, everyone was eager to return to a pre-pandemic normalcy.

But make no mistake: just like a persistent horror movie franchise that's overstayed its welcome, the pandemic is still here. Faced with the very real possibilities of contagion, Fantasia perfectly reflects the challenges faced by live-event organizers who are eager to get back to operating in the flesh.

One eagerly-anticipated guest, filmmaker Neil LaBute, had to cancel his appearance at the Montreal festival. And halfway through the event, Fantasia's co-founder and artistic director Mitch Davis announced that he himself would be self-isolating for the remainder of the festival after testing positive for Covid. 

There is certainly a loaded irony to a festival like Fantasia still feeling the impact of what everyone hopes are the final waves of a global pandemic. Horror films are often rife with storylines and motifs that are inspired by contagion, and horror is one of the basic genres that Fantasia specializes in. Davis was conscious of this while programming this edition, the festival's 26th: "We weren't going to take any Covidsploitation films," he says.

It's also meaningful because Fantasia is famous for its distinctly robust, engaged and elated audiences, who make the experience of watching a film that much more intense — and large crowds are precisely the kind of gatherings we've been warned to avoid. The horror genre in particular is exponentially more fun to experience when sitting with an enthralled group of fellow horror nerds. I've been attending Fantasia since its first year over a quarter century ago, and I can attest to how much fun their audiences are.

"The shared experience can't be beat," says Davis, who admits to being "greatly saddened" that he's had to sit out the final days of this year's fest. "Everything is amplified when you're with an audience. The sense of menace, the suspense, all of the big moments and even the smaller nuanced ones — you can feel them ripple through the audience. There are palpable balls of energy."

Davis notes that Fantasia audiences will scream when need be, but are also "very respectful of the films and filmmakers. When there is dialogue, they are whisper-quiet. When I think back to my favourite experiences at Fantasia, it's not just the films — it's also the collective gasps, applause or outrage in response to moments in each film."

This keen audience engagement is one of the reasons Quentin Tarantino has declared Fantasia "the most important and prestigious genre film festival on this continent," and Guillermo del Toro has called the event "a shrine." Davis says that audience vibe is "an energy I live for."

This year's event has featured a broad range of premieres from around the world, as well as a tribute to legendary action-movie auteur John Woo, who was met with standing ovations at the events he attended. But even that tribute had to be adapted due to the ongoing pandemic, says Davis.

"Woo is 75 years old, so there's no way we wanted to risk him being exposed. At Fantasia, we love the idea of there being no boundaries between the visiting artists and the audiences, but this time around we had to keep the enthusiastic crowds at a distance. That was painful but people understood the reasons for it."

Fantasia is a festival noteworthy for being full of bizarre, unexpected cinematic surprises, and this year proved no exception (despite the various pandemic challenges). The 2022 line-up included the North American premiere of La Pietà, in which a mother and son attempt to work out the neurotic kinks in their intimate relations while projectile vomiting. The film was directed and written by Eduardo Casanovas, who is increasingly looking like the love child of Almodovar and John Waters. The fest also showcased a series of short films, including Tony Asimakopoulos's heartfelt Good Times Coming, about a son's painful struggle to explain a changing world to his immigrant mother.

The festival juries presented the haunting Belgian film Megalomaniac (directed by Karim Ouelhaj) with its Best Feature Award, calling it "an astonishing, brutal piece of art." The festival also presented a special Canadian Trailblazer Award to author and curator Kier-la Janisse for her championing of the film genre (the author was signing the updated edition of her book of feminist film analysis House of Psychotic Women: An Autobiographical Topography of Female Neurosis in Horror and Exploitation Films at the festival). The full list of 2022 award winners is here. 

The festival's vibe was amazing this year, and for many it really was like a giant film-geek reunion. But there was still a sense of the lurking pandemic: many audience members were masked, and some were exchanging fist bumps instead of hugs and kisses. Fantasia 2022 was marked by elation, but there was a poignant quality as well, especially as Davis himself was absent for the last part of the festival (he usually introduces many of the films and conducts post-screening Q&A sessions). 

So it was like many big festivals and live events this summer: back, but not quite like before. With any luck, next year will be pandemic-free.

Fantasia Festival closes tonight with Halina Reijn's Bodies Bodies Bodies.