For its 23rd edition - the third directed by Pierre-Yves Walder - the Neuchâtel International Fantastic Film Festival (NIFFF) will offer up a plural and engaged programme, providing a first-class showcase for fantastic film shown off in all its splendour. The line-up for this festival - unspooling between 5 and 13 July and paying tribute to 124 works hailing from 5 different continents, representing a total of 46 countries - looks to be diverse and contrasting, delivering a fascinating and well-honed overview of the different cinematographic visions inhabiting this multi-faceted and continually evolving genre.

As stressed in the press release, "the line-up boasts geographical and genre-based diversity, with almost half of the films in the International Competition coming courtesy of women or non-binary people (including Veronika Franz, Camila Beltrán, Shalini Ushadevi and Jane Schoenbrun)". These stories range from the personal to the spectacular, and underline the close ties between feminism and ecology, with a fantastic twist which is bound to win over a fair few viewers. The festival will see fantastic film directing its full critical force towards a society marked by upheavals, both social and political. The press release further insists that, "the festival is continuing its role as head-hunter in this respect, since most of the films presented are first or second works", programmed alongside big names such as Bruno Dumont (with The Empire [+lee también:
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entrevista: Bruno Dumont
ficha de la película], the recent winner of the Berlinale’s Jury Prize) and Ti West (with Maxxxine, rounding off his gory X trilogy in 1980s Los Angeles), to name but two.

A considerable number of European productions and co-productions will be battling it out for the prestigious Narcisse H.R. Giger Prize within the International Competition (composed of 14 films). These include French movie Animale [+lee también:
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entrevista: Emma Benestan
ficha de la película], an initiatory tale by director Emma Benestan (and also the festival’s opening film), alongside Meanwhile on Earth [+lee también:
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ficha de la película] by Jérémy Clapin, Oddity [+lee también:
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ficha de la película] by Ireland’s Damian Mc Carthy, the feminist story The Devil’s Bath [+lee también:
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entrevista: Veronika Franz y Severin F…
ficha de la película] by Veronika Franz and Severin Fiala, the romantic science-fiction saga Eternal [+lee también:
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entrevista: Ulaa Salim
ficha de la película] by Danish director Ulaa Salim, Handling the Undead [+lee también:
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ficha de la película] by Norwegian director and screenwriter Thea Hvistendahl, Mi bestia [+lee también:
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ficha de la película], which is a fascinating and troubling coming-of-age movie by the Colombian filmmaker trained in France Camila Beltrán, Cuckoo [+lee también:
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ficha de la película] by German director Tilman Singer (starring Hunter Schafer in the lead role), and She Loved Blossoms More [+lee también:
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ficha de la película], a surrealist and poetic work by Yannis Veslemes.

Outside of the festival’s competitive sections, Third Kind will also be presenting plenty of European productions and co-productions, including French work Misericordia [+lee también:
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entrevista: Alain Guiraudie
ficha de la película] by Alain Guiraudie, Eat the Night [+lee también:
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entrevista: Caroline Poggi y Jonathan …
ficha de la película] by Caroline Poggi and Jonathan Vinel, The Soul Eater by Alexandre Bustillo and Julien Maury, and Plastic Guns [+lee también:
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entrevista: Jean-Christophe Meurisse
ficha de la película] by Jean-Christophe Meurisse, not to mention The Last Ashes [+lee también:
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ficha de la película] by Luxembourg’s Loïc Tanson (who represented his country at the Oscars), Swedish title Hunters on a White Field [+lee también:
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ficha de la película] by Sarah Gyllenstierna, Greece’s Arcadia [+lee también:
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entrevista: Yorgos Zois
ficha de la película] by Yorgos Zois, The Major Tones [+lee también:
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ficha de la película] by Ingrid Pokropek, Isla Alien by Cristóbal Valenzuela Berríos, and Love Lies Bleeding [+lee también:
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ficha de la película] by British director Rose Glass (starring Kristen Stewart).

Last but not least, European films are also set to feature in the Ultra Movies thrill-seekers section, in the form of Dutch work Krazy House by Steffen Haars and Flip Van der Kuil, and the co-productions Kryptic by Kourtney Roy and Blood Star by British filmmaker Lawrence Jacomelli.