Fantastic Fest is pleased to announce this year’s Fantastic Fest Award winners. It has been an outstanding year for features and shorts, making the job of honoring a select crop all the more difficult, but our esteemed team of jurors have done the nearly impossible and chosen the best films of the festival.
“We really gave our jury members a tough job this year. We have no idea how they were able to choose between so many amazing films,” Festival Director Lisa Dreyer said. “We are so appreciative to all our filmmakers for sharing their phenomenal films with our audience, and the Jurors’ choices truly embody the wild and wonderful cinematic excellence we love to champion at Fantastic Fest.”
“MAIN COMPETITION” FEATURES
Best Picture: LA PIETÀ directed by Eduardo Casanova
Best Director: Ali Abassi for HOLY SPIDER
“NEXT WAVE” FEATURES
Best Picture: THE FIVE DEVILS directed by Léa Mysius
Best Director: Thomas Hardiman for MEDUSA DELUXE
HORROR FEATURES
Best Picture: PIGGY directed by Carlota Pereda
Best Directors: Mike Mendez, Demian Rugna, Eduardo Sanchez, Gigi Saul Guerrero & Alejandro Brugués for SATANIC HISPANICS
SHORTS WITH LEGS
Best Picture: HUBBARDS directed by Kevin Ralston
Special Mention: ALEGRÍAS RIOJANAS directed by Velasco Broca
SHORT FUSE
Best Picture: RINGWORMS directed by Will Lee
Special Mention: GNOMES directed by Ruwan Heggelman
FANTASTIC SHORTS
Best Picture: THE DIAMOND directed by Vedran Rupic
Special Mention to A MAN TREMBLES directed by Mark Chua, Lam Li Shuen (Emoumie)
DRAWN AND QUARTERED
Best Picture: A GUITAR IN THE BUCKET directed by Boyoung Kim
Special Mention to HAPPY NEW YEAR, JIM directed by Andrea Gatopoulos
AUDIENCE AWARD
THE MENU directed by Mark Mylod
For more information on the films listed above, visit http://fantasticfest.com/films.
For the latest developments, visit the Fantastic Fest official site www.fantasticfest.com and follow us on Facebook & Twitter.
Fantastic Fest is the largest genre film festival in the U.S., specializing in horror, fantasy, sci-fi, action and just plain fantastic movies from all around the world. In years past, the festival has been home to the world and US premieres of PARASITE, JOJO RABBIT, THE BLACK PHONE, JOHN WICK, FRANKENWEENIE, THERE WILL BE BLOOD, APOCALYPTO, ZOMBIELAND, RED, SPLIT, HALLOWEEN, BAD TIMES AT THE EL ROYALE, MID 90s, and SUSPIRIA while the guest roster has included such talent as Tim Burton, Nicolas Winding-Refn, Lilly and Lana Wachowski, Bong Joon-Ho, Taika Waititi, Robert Rodriguez, Rian Johnson, Bill Murray, Keanu Reeves, Martin Landau, Winona Ryder, Edward Norton, Ryan Reynolds, Patrick Wilson, Matthew Fox, Karl Urban, Josh Hartnett, The RZA, Dolph Lundgren, Paul Rudd, Bill Pullman, Paul Thomas Anderson, Kevin Smith, Jon Favreau, George Romero, Darren Aronofsky, Mike Judge, Karyn Kusama, M. Night Shyamalan, James McAvoy, Vince Vaughn, Jamie Lee Curtis, Jonah Hill, Barbara Crampton and Jessica Harper. Fantastic Fest also features world, national, and regional premieres of new, up-and-coming genre films. Fantastic Fest has seen the acquisition of many titles, including BULLHEAD, KILL LIST, MONSTERS, KLOWN, THE FP, PENUMBRA, HERE COMES THE DEVIL, NO REST FOR THE WICKED, VANISHING WAVES, COMBAT GIRLS, I DECLARE WAR, THE PERFECTION, and TIGERS ARE NOT AFRAID Fantastic Fest is held each year at the Alamo Drafthouse Cinema in Austin, Texas. Alamo Drafthouse has been named the best theater in the country by Entertainment Weekly, Wired, and TIME.
Our Partners
Presenting Sponsors for Fantastic Fest as of now include Austin-born Milton Sleep Co. who will be providing some of their unique bed-in-a-box comfort throughout the week; and Wicked Kitchen, a 100% plant-based global food brand created by chefs and brothers Derek and Chad Sarno, who are on a mission to improve the lives of humans and animals globally by inspiring the world to eat more plants.
This year, Fantastic Fest has teamed with Legion M to release “Film Scout”, an app that puts fest-goers and fans around the world in the role of Hollywood executives to “scout,” rate, and rank their favorite films. Film Scouts compete against one another for honor and prizes, and the reviews provided by these fantastic film fans will be used by Legion M and their partners to evaluate movies for potential distribution deals.
To continue the effort toward creating a more accessible festival, the fest has again partnered with Rev to provide captions for the English language films playing virtually through FF@Home.
Alamo Drafthouse Cinema, celebrating its 25th anniversary, was founded in 1997 as a single-screen mom and pop repertory theater in Austin, TX. Twenty-five years later, with 36 locations and counting, Alamo Drafthouse has been called “the best theater in America” by Entertainment Weekly and “the best theater in the world” by Wired. Alamo Drafthouse has built a reputation as a movie lover’s oasis not only by combining best-in-class food and drink service with the movie-going experience, but also introducing unique programming and high-profile, star-studded special events. Alamo Drafthouse created Fantastic Fest, a world-renowned genre film festival dubbed “The Geek Telluride” by Variety featuring independents, international filmmakers, and major Hollywood studios. Alamo Drafthouse continues to expand its brand in new and exciting ways, including the American Genre Film Archive, a non-profit film archive dedicated to preserving, restoring and sharing film, and with eight new theaters announced for this year and beyond.
Editor-in-Chief | Seat42F, a leading source of entertainment news, information, television and movie resources.
