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FESTIVALS / AWARDS Spain

Outlandish creatures descend on Bilbao for FANT 2021

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- The 27th edition of the fantastic film festival is unspooling between 7 and 16 May, to be opened with the world premiere of Igor Legarreta’s Ilargi Guztiak. Todas las lunas

Outlandish creatures descend on Bilbao for FANT 2021
Ilargi Guztiak. Todas las lunas by Igor Legarreta

The Bilbao Fantastic Film Festival – FANT, organised by Bilbao City Council, is holding its 27th edition from Friday 7 May until Sunday 16 May, and it will be a good litmus test to see if its residents are indeed as brave and as hard to scare as all the jokes about Basque people would have us believe. The world premiere of Ilargi Guztiak. Todas las lunas [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Igor Legarreta
film profile
]
, the latest offering by Igor Legarreta, will have the honour of kicking off this audiovisual marathon that broaches fantastical themes and presents awe-inspiring conflicts from this turbulent world – and beyond.

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For instance, standing out in its official competition section are titles of the likes of Benny Loves You [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile
]
(UK), in which first-time feature director Karl Holt demonstrates in the flesh (he plays the protagonist himself) that getting rid of a close childhood friend, as fluffy and cuddly as it may be, can have disastrous repercussions. Another standout movie is the Hungarian flick Comrade Draculich [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Márk Bodzsár
film profile
]
, the second feature by Márk Bodzsár, which sees a group of crack police officers banishing vampires with the tried-and-tested method of using garlic as a foolproof anti-bloodsucker weapon. Meanwhile, In Happy Times (Israel/USA/Italy) by Michael Mayer, a night out ends up derailing and veering off into something terrible, a far cry from the joy alluded to by the title. With the claustrophobic Meander [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Mathieu Turi
film profile
]
, France’s Mathieu Turi shows off just how much fun he had while training as assistant director to Quentin Tarantino, although here one would think that he had also shut himself away with Spaniard Rodrigo Cortés. Siblings Harpo and Lenny Guit have channelled the humour of the Marx and Farrelly brothers in their feature debut, the Belgian production Mother Schmuckers [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Harpo and Lenny Guit
film profile
]
, and out of competition, among other movies, audiences will also be able to enjoy Tailgate (Belgium/Netherlands), which could be described as a personal, 21st-century, family-focused revamp of Steven Spielberg's Duel, helmed by Lodewijk Crijns.

In the Panorama Fantástico strand, Bilbao residents with even more guts will have a whale of a time with the feature debut by Germany’s Julian Richberg, Arboretum, starring two teenagers on a quest for vengeance. They will also enjoy watching the junk food-gobbling, bipolar couple in Ordinary Creatures by Austria’s Thomas Marschall, an outstanding pupil of Michael Haneke’s, plus they will recognise certain aspects of the pandemic suffered by the Siberians in Mom, I Befriended Ghosts, directed by Sasha Voronov.

In addition to an impressive assortment of short films of all genres (as well as the odd documentary), a meet-up with some of the crew (the Goya-winning people responsible for the wardrobe and the soundtrack) from the film Akelarre [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Pablo Agüero
film profile
]
by Pablo Agüero, and a juicy exhibition dedicated to the figure of Dracula and his minions/copycats, FANT Bilbao 2021 will hand out its Fantrobia Award to Barcelona-born filmmaker Lluís Quilez, whom we have to thank for the recent chilling prison-based thriller Below Zero [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Lluís Quílez
film profile
]
, while its Honorary Fant Award will be bestowed upon another illustrious Catalonian, Jaume Balagueró, the (co-)director of the REC saga, from whom we are eagerly awaiting the yet-to-be-released (in Europe) The Vault [+see also:
trailer
film profile
]
.

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(Translated from Spanish)

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