Fantasia 2026 Reveals Massive Final Wave as Her Private Hell Opens and Freaks Part II Closes Landmark 30th Edition

Fantasia International Film Festival celebrates its 30th edition with major premieres, career honors, and more than 125 feature films.

Fantasia 2026 Sets 30th Edition With Her Private Hell, Freaks Part II and Career Honors for Nicolas Winding Refn and Takashi Shimizu

Fantasia International Film Festival will mark its 30th edition with a massive 2026 lineup that opens with the Canadian premiere of Nicolas Winding Refn’s Her Private Hell and closes with the world premiere of Zach Lipovsky and Adam Stein’s Freaks Part II.

The Montreal genre festival runs July 16 through Aug. 2, returning to Concordia Hall and J.A. de Sève cinemas, with additional screenings and events at Cinéma du Musée. This year’s complete program includes more than 125 features and over 200 shorts, with ticket pre-sales opening July 3 at 10 a.m.

Fantasia will also present Cheval Noir Career Achievement Awards to Refn and Japanese horror master Takashi Shimizu. Refn will be honored as Her Private Hell opens the festival, while Shimizu will be celebrated with the world premiere of Village of Eight Gravestones and the North American premiere of The Mouths.

Her Private Hell marks Refn’s return to feature filmmaking with a surreal neo-noir and giallo-inspired fairy tale starring Sophie Thatcher, Charles Melton, Havana Rose Liu, Kristine Froseth and Dougray Scott. The film is described as a personal meditation on memory, mortality and resurrection.

Closing night belongs to Freaks Part II, the sequel to Lipovsky and Stein’s 2018 sci-fi thriller Freaks. Amanda Crew returns as Mary, now living on the run with her daughter Chloe, played by Lorelei Olivia Mote, as they evade the Abnormal Defense Force while confronting a violent past. The film will screen in the Cheval Noir Competition.

Shimizu’s Village of Eight Gravestones brings the legendary Detective Kindaichi into a folk-horror mystery involving a cursed village, family bloodshed and bizarre rituals. The Mouths follows students who visit a haunted cemetery and encounter a supernatural nightmare tied to a cursed tree.

The final wave also includes Bob Colaers’ action film Attack on Paradise, Atsushi Nishigori’s animated Grotesqqque, Seth A Smith’s surreal housing-crisis caper Permanent Damage, Eriko Katagiri’s werewolf film When You Open the Door, Mark H. Rapaport’s Godhead, Ashlea Wessel’s creature feature Junction Row, Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s period mystery The Samurai and the Prisoner, Casper Kelly’s homicidal mascot horror film Buddy, and the Hong Kong genre-bender Unidentified Murder.

Fantasia will also spotlight international genre titles including The Last Footage, Jim Queen, Insecstasy, A New Dawn, Sicko, Blaise, Beasts Clutching at Straws, Bowls of Hell, Bliss: Beyond the Edge of Time, Tristes Tropiques, Romin and The Galactic Ghoul.

The festival’s retro programming returns with restoration premieres, 35mm screenings and special presentations, including City War, The Delinquent, Forty Deuce, Gozu, Metal Messiah, Pontypool, Redline, Studio Q and Thrilling Bloody Sword.

Additional 2026 honorees include Don Hertzfeldt, who will receive the Indie Maverick Award; Bruce McDonald, who will receive the Canadian Trailblazer Award; and Robert Lepage and Louise Portal, who will receive Denis-Héroux Awards.

Fantasia’s full 2026 lineup is now available through the festival’s official website.