The stars at Fantasia are its genre auteurs, such as this year cult Canadian collective RKSS which closes the festival with “We Are Zombies,” starring Megan Peta Hill, Alexandre Nachi and Derek Johns.

They are also conducting a masterclass at the festival.

Congrats RKSS!

Fantasia Film Festival runs July 20 to Aug. 9.

Also unspooling from July 26-29 within the Fantasia International Film Festival is the large Frontières industry forum, packed with the presentation of genre projects, led by their directors and producers with little cast attached.

Congrats to Robert on his first feature, which had a very successful premiere at Karlovy in early July 2023, where the Czeck director was awestruck by the two standing ovations.

Variety’s Guy Lodge opines “director Robert Hloz’s whopper of a calling-card debut may offer a more credibly subdued, budget-constrained visual of the mid-21st century than the lavishly built “Blade Runner 2049” — unless we’re in for a drastic design (r)evolution over the course of the 2040s — but its ideas are sky-high in concept. Robert Hloz shows Hollywood-level chops in a resourceful, niftily plotted vision of a near future where human life can’t always be saved, but it can be rebooted.”

Screen Daily calls it a “stylish, high-concept self-contained piece of storytelling.”

Following its home premiere in Karlovy Vary’s Special Screenings section, it will make its North American debut at the genre-specific Fantasia Festival.

Meredith Hambrock’s latest novel, Other People’s Secrets, got her nominated for this Las Vegas writing residency during which she will be working on her next literary mystery novel, Woman Found Floating, about the crew on a superyacht and all that unfolds when they rescue a mysterious woman they find floating in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.

The Game Arts International Assembly (GAIA) is an international think tank and network for the professional development of the game arts community aimed at curators, producers, event organizers and academics working in the field of videogame culture.

Among many other wonderful things, the 2023 edition of GAIA will consist of three days of personal talks, playful events, and round tables focusing on:

– Interactive and playful sessions generating ideas to address big issue problems;
– Bonding/integration activities designed for the participants, including visits to local game developers studios, to museums and to local cultural venues and activities.

Also, Paloma Dawkins will be part of a panel on conjuring our experiences and disciplines outside of games. Paloma is a Canadian cartoonist turned award winning virtual-reality and video-game artist. She is the founder of the XR and animation studio Apocablyss Studios (2021). Dawkins’ games are praised for being digital spaces that celebrate natural life and rhythms. She has organized pre-pandemic events for avant-garde and performative games/experiences as well as game jams in Montreal and around the world.

Congratulations to Paloma Dawkins and friends for her nomination at Berlin’s Amaze Awards for her game Songs of the Lost.

Also, big congratulations to Meredith Hambrock on her Lefty nomination for Best Debut Mystery Novel: Other People’s Secrets.