Premieres, prizes and pickles at Montreal's Fantasia Film Festival that 'showcases the weird'

Watching a film at Montreal's Fantasia International Film Festival might be a little different from the typical theatre experience. 

"People meow before the screenings," said Ariel Esteban Cayer, one of the Fantasia programmers this year. He says the communal experience is what makes the festival special.

"It's very vocal," he said. "I think you feel part of the community quite, quite fast." 

The 26th edition of Fantasia, which bills itself as North America's largest genre film festival, wrapped up on Wednesday. It featured films from a wide array of genres and countries, including 15 Canadian feature films and 78 Canadian shorts.

Belgian horror film Megalomaniac won the Cheval Noir as the festival's top feature, and South Korean director July Jung won the best director prize for her closing film Next Sohee, a drama about a high school student and a mysterious death. Jung's film also played at the Cannes Film Festival, where it received a seven-minute standing ovation. 

Next Sohee is based on a true story that came to Jung's attention through an investigative television program, she told CBC News. She said she was motivated to create the story in order to keep the victim's memory alive. 

"I thought that it would not be enough to just present this incident as an investigative program or documentary," she said. "I felt that the victim … can be alive through the story, through the film.

"Even though I didn't make my film thinking that I should make this film with this kind of genre or not, I think that audiences can consider my film as a kind of horror film because it deals with very desperate and miserable and difficult situations," Jung said. 

There was also Canadian talent on display. Aristomenis Tsirbas grew up in Montreal attending Fantasia, and this week he got to see his own film make its world premiere at the festival: the youthful science-fiction adventure Timescape.

The director called the experience a dream come true, noting he's still processing it a few days later. Timescape follows the story of two strangers who discover a spacecraft and are transported back to the Cretaceous period. 

"It was just an absolutely incredible, overwhelming, joyous experience," Tsirbas said.

Timescape is set to open in Canadian theatres Aug. 19.

Another Canadian recognized this year was filmmaker Kier-La Janisse, who won the festival's Canadian Trailblazer Award. Janisse has been writing about horror for decades, with works like House of Psychotic Women, and a recent documentary on folk horror, Woodlands Dark and Days Bewitched. 

Janisse said she feels like there's been a wider shift in the acceptance and recognition of genre film in North America.