Neuchatel Fantastic Film Festival Finds Deeper Truths in Fantasy

variety.com:

Ben Croll Roaring towards its 23rd edition, the Neuchatel Intl. Fantastic Film Festival (NIFFF) built its reputation as a haven for outré fare, pulling in a reliable (and renewable) youth crowd eager for wild thrills and hard-to-source Asian titles, while becoming a fixture on the horror festival circuit as a lakeside home-away-from-home for a stable of filmmakers who return year and again.

For the past half-decade or so, the Swiss showcase has also branched outward, welcoming new faces and diverse voices into the mix, all while pairing a more expansive vision of fantasy and with an intersectional programing remit that explores sociological questions through genre – or, if you will, that sees in fantasy a more crystalline reflection of the wider world. “Fantasy is the cinema of the margins, the cinema of the forbidden,” says NIFFF director Pierre-Yves Walder. “It is the tool that underrepresented or minority communities use to tell their own stories, and so I see it as part of our mission to share films that might not be as visible elsewhere.

Across all of international cinema, genre filmmaking is evolving.” Running July 5 – 13, this year’s edition will screen 124 films spread across six sections that spans five continents and 46 countries.

The festival will open with Emma Benestan’s “Animale,” an atmospheric slow-burn about a young bullfighter transforming into her prey.