Die Hard director John McTiernan and leading French actress and writer Josiane Balasko are among those taking part in this year’s Neuchâtel International Fantastic Film Festival (NIFFF), which runs June 30-July 8.
The full programme for the 22nd edition of the Swiss event, again under the artistic direction of Pierre-Yves Walder, includes 124 films from 5 continents and 44 countries. There are eight world premieres, among them Irish director Ian Hunt-Duffy’s horror thriller Double Blind starring The Walking Dead’s Pollyanna McIntosh, alongside Millie Brady and Kate Ashfield, and Quarxx’s new horror Pandemonium, both screening in the festival’s Ultra Section.
Balasko (French Twist, Too Beautiful For You) is president of the International Jury which will be assessing films in the international competition. This selection includes UK director Christopher Smith’s Consecration starring Danny Huston, Jena Malone and Janet Suzman, and made through AGC Studios, Ti West’s Pearl, Bishal Dutta’s SXSW hit It Lives Inside, and the European premiere of new British mystery horror pic Raging Grace directed by Paris Zarcilla.
The festival is holding a separate Asian competition which includes such titles as Cheng Wei-Hao’s Taiwanese supernatural buddy movie Marry My Dead Body and Bollywood werewolf movie, Bhediya.
As in recent years, NIFFF will continue to explore genre-bending horror and fantasy in its Third Kind sidebar which includes the international premiere of Guy Édoin’s Frontiers starring Pascale Bussières.
Meanwhile, in the Ultra Movies section, Lee Cronin will be presenting Evil Dead Rise, the fifth entry in the blood-spattered franchise originally conceived by Sam Raimi.
There will be special screenings of the work of McTiernan (including Die Hard and Predator) and Katsuhito Ishii. McTiernan, one of the pioneers of US action movies of the 80s and 90s, will be interviewed on stage by journalist Rafael Wolf.
This year sees a special sidebar, Female Trouble, exploring female archetypes in genre cinema. This includes 20 films as well as public roundtable discussion featuring, among others, Spanish director Carlota Pereda (who will be presenting her own film Piggy as part of the retrospective), and London-based Anna Bogutskaya, host of The Final Girlsand whose new book Unlikeable Female Characters looks at the history and evolution of unlikeable female characters in film, TV and pop culture.
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