The 2021 edition of the Fantasia International Film Festival is just around the corner and MMC! is happy to report that it will be covering this year’s FIFF once again! Fantasia’s full slate of films and special events are now lined up and its merch store is online and ready to take your money. MMC! will provide round-ups of the Festival like last year as well as find some worthy titles for potential spine-numbering, but ongoing coverage can be found at my Letterboxd list for the Fest. (I’ll try to set up a separate list for short films but there’s sooooo many short films being shown at Fantasia…)
In the meantime, let’s check out a few trailers from FIFF’s various programs that have piqued MMC!’s interest!
“The titan Takashi Miike takes us back to the magical world of the Yokai as a war threatens to destroy Tokyo. An irreverent fairytale!”
Fantasia’s “Cheval Noir” section is its flagship, juried competition and MMC! can’t help but be drawn to Takashi Miike’s The Great Yokai War – Guardians. The film returns Miike to the wacky world of his 2005 movie The Great Yokai War and features a pair of boys who discover they are the last descendants of a legendary fighter and the only hope to save some gentle demons and the city of Tokyo. And in an elegant bit of programming, Fantasia has slotted Miike’s latest to close the 2021 Festival, book-ending it against the director’s earlier film that opened the 2006 Festival.