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 [+leggi anche:
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intervista: Bruno Dumont
scheda film], 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 [+leggi anche:
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scheda film], an initiatory tale by director Emma Benestan (and also the festival’s opening film), alongside Meanwhile on Earth [+leggi anche:
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scheda film] by Jérémy Clapin, Oddity [+leggi anche:
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scheda film] by Ireland’s Damian Mc Carthy, the feminist story The Devil’s Bath [+leggi anche:
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intervista: Veronika Franz, Severin Fi…
scheda film] by Veronika Franz and Severin Fiala, the romantic science-fiction saga Eternal [+leggi anche:
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intervista: Ulaa Salim
scheda film] by Danish director Ulaa Salim, Handling the Undead [+leggi anche:
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scheda film] by Norwegian director and screenwriter Thea Hvistendahl, Mi bestia [+leggi anche:
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scheda film], which is a fascinating and troubling coming-of-age movie by the Colombian filmmaker trained in France Camila Beltrán, Cuckoo [+leggi anche:
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scheda film] by German director Tilman Singer (starring Hunter Schafer in the lead role), and She Loved Blossoms More [+leggi anche:
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Outside of the festival’s competitive sections, Third Kind will also be presenting plenty of European productions and co-productions, including French work Misericordia [+leggi anche:
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intervista: Alain Guiraudie
scheda film] by Alain Guiraudie, Eat the Night [+leggi anche:
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intervista: Caroline Poggi e Jonathan …
scheda film] by Caroline Poggi and Jonathan Vinel, The Soul Eater by Alexandre Bustillo and Julien Maury, and Plastic Guns [+leggi anche:
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intervista: Jean-Christophe Meurisse
scheda film] by Jean-Christophe Meurisse, not to mention The Last Ashes [+leggi anche:
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scheda film] by Luxembourg’s Loïc Tanson (who represented his country at the Oscars), Swedish title Hunters on a White Field [+leggi anche:
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scheda film] by Sarah Gyllenstierna, Greece’s Arcadia [+leggi anche:
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intervista: Yorgos Zois
scheda film] by Yorgos Zois, The Major Tones [+leggi anche:
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scheda film] by Ingrid Pokropek, Isla Alien by Cristóbal Valenzuela Berríos, and Love Lies Bleeding [+leggi anche:
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scheda film] 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.