‘Red Rooms’ Thriller to Open Fantasia Film Fest

The Fantasia Film Festival is set to open its 27th edition with Pascal Plante’s Red Rooms, a French-language thriller about a woman’s obsession with a high-profile serial killer case.

The genre pic, which stars Maxwell McCabe-Lokos and Juliette Gariépy, will get a North American premiere in Montreal after bowing in competition in Karlovy Vary.

On Thursday, as Fantasia unveiled its second wave of titles, the festival also booked world premieres for Shigeyoshi Tsukahara’s anime adventure. Kurayubaka; Eva Strelnikova’s Stay Online, a Ukrainian thriller shot against the backdrop of the current Russian invasion; and director Robert Cuffley’s Romi, which explores the horrors of artificial intelligence in a smart home and stars Alexa Barajas.

There are also first looks for Zach Clark’s body-swapping romancer The Becomers; Quebec director Oliver Godin’s Irelande Cahier Bleu; and The Primevals, a live-action and stop-motion monster movie from directors Charles Band and Chris Endicott.

Fantasia also unveiled an international premiere for Sympathy for the Devil, which stars Nicolas Cage and reunites director Yuval Adler with Joel Kinnaman after The Secrets We Keep. RLJE Films earlier picked up North American rights to the psychological thriller that kicks off with a man (Kinnaman) forced at gunpoint to drive a mysterious passenger (Cage), only to find himself in a high-stakes game of cat-and-mouse in which it becomes clear that not everything is as it seems.

Fantasia is also giving an international premiere to Insomniacs After School, an adaptation of Makoto Ojiro’s popular manga directed by Chihiro Ikeda.

North America’s largest genre film festival earlier announced a raft of world premieres for its 27th edition, including for Theresa Sutherland’s Lovely Dark and Deepwhich features Barbarian star Georgina Campbell; Victor Ginzburg’s Empire V; Jared Moshe’s Aporia, led by Judy Greer and Faith Herman; and Where The Devil Roams, from directors Toby Poster, John Adams and Zelda Adams, also known as The Adams Family.

Other world bows in Montreal already announced include Xavier Gens’ Mayhem!, which stars Nassim Lyes and Olivier Gourmet; horror auteur Larry Fessenden’s Blackout; Nicholas Tomnay’s What You Wish For, with Nick Stahl playing a chef with a gambling problem and from the producers of The Florida Project; and Ryan Ward’s Daughter of the Sun.

The Fantasia festival is set to run July 20-Aug. 9 in Montreal.