Fantasia Reveals Final Animated Titles

 Fantasia International Fim Festival is not dedicated to animation- it runs the full gamut of genre cinema. However, it does have a long association with animation, and annually awards the Satoshi Kon Award for animation. It tends to have a decent selection of animated films every year- and 2024 looks no different. This year Fantasia has already revealed an exciting slate of animation including Mononoke The Movie and The Missing. Now they have announced their third and final wave of titles, including several that are part of the Animation Plus strand.

Umbrella Fairy is a high-end piece of 2D Chinese animation, from director Shen Jie, making his directorial debut. All things possess spirits that are capable of transforming into fairies. One single piece of Jade is able to transform both an umbrella and a sword but from the very beginning, the fairies Qingdai and Wanggui are destined for different missions.

Ghost Cat Anzu. 11-year old Karin is dumped by her good-for-nothing father in a sleepy country town. She's left in the care of Anzu, who's affable if rather feckless and uncouth... oh yeah, and he's also an immortal ghost cat. This French-Japanese co-production is based on a manga and is co-directed by Yoko Kuno and Nobuhiro Yamashita who is normally a live-action director. North American Premiere

Animated Films In Selection

Sunburnt Unicorn A new fantasy adventure for all audiences, from Canadian filmmaker Nick Johnson. Inspired by 1980's fantasy films, Sunburnt Unicorn is described as "a hallucinatory, existential odyssey" that will serve as something of a gateway to the horror genre for younger audiences. Features music by the Inuit throat-singing duo Piqsiq.

Based on a trilogy of films originally released in 2016, this has been extensively reworked into something new. Part of the expansive Monogatari franchise, this is a prequel that features the first meeting between lonely teen Kyomi and a beautiful vampire. The restoration is overseen by original co-director  Tatsuya Oishi.

Tiki Tiki is a genuine lost classic and a hallucinatory, existential odyssey, a hybrid feature that combines Yellow Submarine-style animation with repurposed live-action footage from AYBOLIT-66, a Soviet children’s fantasy film.  It tells the story of a motorbike riding, film-directing ape and and a multimillion-dollar contraption called the FMM 70, the world’s first all-purpose, rocket-propelled, flying movie machine. It all results in a unique satire of Hollywood

This year's Fantasia Festival - its 28th edition- will run from  July 18 to August 4 - for more information and tickets visit the official website here.