North

Dead North Film Festival kicks off tonight in Yellowknife

Sci-fi, horror and fantasy films submitted from all the Yukon, Northwest Territories, and Nunavut will be screened at the three-year-old film festival in Yellowknife.

2-day event to showcase locally made genre films from all 3 territories

For the first time, Yellowknife's Dead North Film Festival will screen films from all three territories. (Dead North Film Festival)

A made-in-the-North sci-fi, horror and fantasy film festival, featuring offerings from all three territories, kicks off in Yellowknife tonight.

Sixteen Northern-made films — double the number from last year — will be screened at this year's Dead North Film Festival.

Anyone who is going to make films in minus -40 C temperatures, I want to see what they're going to make.- Mitch Davis, Dead North Film Festival judge 

Festival co-director Jay Bulckaert has even grander ambitions for the three-year-old festival's future.

"I think it would be amazing to have a circumpolar genre film festival, where we are getting stuff from Norway, Greenland, and Iceland," he says. "All north of 60."

Judges will pick their favourite films tonight after screenings at Yellowknife's Northern Arts and Culture Centre. The winners will be screened at the Snow Castle on Great Slave Lake tomorrow night.

Mitch Davis, co-director of Montreal's Fantasia International Film Festival — one of the biggest genre film festivals in North America — agreed to act as a judge for Dead North.

"Anyone who is going to make films in minus -40 C temperatures, I want to see what they're going to make," he says.