Competitions

Born in Geneva, Mahnert studied film production at the NYFA and worked as a production assistant at Roger Corman’s Concorde-New Horizons. Back in Switzerland, she went on to work in distribution and programming at 20th Century Fox, Warner Bros., Pathé Cinémas and Frenetic. Early 2012 she moved to Paris to join the renowned sales agency Celluloid Dreams, handling sales and acquisitions. Since 2013, she is working as a freelance producer, acquisitions consultant and festival programmer and is an expert at the Austrian Film Institute and the Swiss Federal Office of Culture for film funding. Mahnert recently coproduced Alexandre O. Philippe’s documentary MEMORY: THE ORIGINS OF ALIEN (Sundance 2019). Philippe’s LEAP OF FAITH : WILLIAM FRIEDKIN ON THE EXORCIST is currently in postproduction. She is also currently finishing up post on THE LONG WALK, the new film by Mattie Do and first ever Lao Sci-Fi film. Her latest production, HUACHICOLERO (THE GASOLINE THIEVES), won the award for Best New Narrative Director at the Tribeca Film Festival in May 2019. Mahnert is a programmer at the Sitges Film Festival and the Director of International Programming at the Fantastic Fest in Austin.

Shaked Berenson produced and executive produced twenty-two features and two television series including Fantasia’s JERUZAELM, the cult hit TURBO KID and the all-star horror anthology TALES OF HALLOWEEN. Most recently, Shaked executive produced EXTRA ORDINARY, a Frontières’ project playing this year out of competition and the horror-comedy SLAXX, through his Los-Angeles based production company, Entertainment Squad. Shaked served on the IFTA™ (Independent Film & Television Alliance) Board of Directors since 2011, a PGA (Producers Guild of America) member since 2013 and has MBA from UCLA/Anderson. He has been a guest speaker at various forums including USC, SXSW and AFM.

Amy Darling is the founder and managing partner of MEDIA DARLING, a lean 'n' mean Canadian film company specializing in the discovery and support of uncommon voices via development, strategy, financing, and international partnerships. One project, the Norwegian-language feature VIOLENT, hailed by The Hollywood Reporter as “hurling a brick for Canadian newcomers", garnered a boatload of accolades, including being named to TIFF’s Canada’s Top Ten and consideration as Canada's submission to the Academy Awards for Best Foreign Language Film. With the company's interest now pointed enthusiastically toward Latin America, the majority of the current MEDIA DARLING slate consists of Spanish language projects bursting deliriously with heart and grit. The company has also partnered with Mexico's post production powerhouse Chemistry in that company's long anticipated expansion into the international market. Amy is a member of the Board of Directors of the Calgary Underground Film Festival.

As Director of Acquisitions & Theatrical/Festival Sales, Miles Fineburg has been with Samuel Goldwyn Films since 2017. He oversees acquisitions at the company working alongside President Peter Goldwyn. Additionally, he is responsible for creating and executing Theatrical and Festival strategies on new release films. Miles joined Samuel Goldwyn Films from Terror Films. While at Terror Films he helped produce three original titles and oversaw acquisitions, marketing and distribution of close to 20 films during his tenure. He began his career with production company Sunrise Pictures joining as a production executive in 2012. He is a graduate of Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, New York.

Best known as a keyboard player of the prog band Goblin, Maurizio Guarini is a composer and multi-instrumentalist.
Born in Rome, Italy, his music exploration went through prog, jazz-rock, fusion. He joined Goblin in 1975 and has worked on hundreds of film scores and studio/live productions, often focusing on the horror and sci-fi genres including SUSPIRIA, PATRICK, CONTAMINATION and BUIO OMEGA. He was also a regular session musician with composer Fabio Frizzi and performed on such iconic Fulci scores as THE BEYOND, ZOMBIE and CITY OF THE LIVING DEAD. In the past decade Maurizio has been touring worldwide with Goblin, and as a solo performer after releasing his first solo album in 2013. Recent production focused in soundtracks for movies and spoken word records. Currently, he is working on a new studio album. In 2017, he started a new project, performing live a soundtrack specifically composed for Dante's Inferno, a silent movie from 1911, which he performed at Fantasia last summer.

Onur Tukel is the writer/director of several feature films, including SUMMER OF BLOOD, APPLESAUCE andCATFIGHT, which premiered at the 2016 Toronto Film Festival. He has written and illustrated two children's books, Little Friends and Rainstack!. Tukel has acted in several films, including RED FLAG, BOOGER RED, SUMMER OF BLOOD and APPLESAUCE. He played an artist in the feature film SEPTIEN, and created over 65 pieces of art for the movie. He recently appeared in season 2 of HBO's ROOM 104. Tukel's two newest films, THE MISOGYNISTS and BLACK MAGIC FOR WHITE BOYS will be released in 2019. You can see his paintings at simiannation.com

Jonathan Barkan is the editor-in-chief of Dread Central, one of the internet's leading horror websites, as well as an acquisitions ambassador for DREAD Presents, a genre-centric distribution label under the banner of Epic Pictures Group. An internet personality, he has appeared on multiple podcasts and news segments to discuss the social and cultural significance of horror. He has also served as a jury member at various film festivals around the world.

Over the last two decades, Susan has worked as a marketing executive for BMG, Sony Wonder, Tower Records, Universal Music and Anchor Bay Entertainment (Starz). Currently COO of A71 Entertainment, Susan continues to be a champion of new talent, enjoying the energy and ingenuity of the creative people she meets in the independent film community while successfully bringing their projects to the marketplace. Upcoming genre releases include the female directed films, SHE NEVER DIED, the follow up to HE NEVER DIED, DON’T CLICK and the Soska Sisters’ re-imagining of Cronenberg’s 1977 classic RABID.

Ariel Fisher is a writer, editor, and podcaster from Toronto. She has written for Atom Insider, Birth.Movies.Death., Rue Morgue, and Fangoria, and contributed to BBC Culture’s 2017 and 2018 polls of the 100 greatest comedies and foreign-language films. In 2018, she moderated a panel on Women in Horror for the Directors Guild of Canada’s first DGC Biennial Convention with panelists Jovanka Vukovic, Jen Soska, and Sylvia Soska. She co-hosts, edits, and produces After All, a podcast exploring the social, political, and personal impact of the Mary Tyler Moore Show, and was published in Spectacular Optical’s Yuletide Terror: Christmas Horror on Film and Television.

Kyle Greenberg is the Director of Theatrical Marketing and Distribution at Gunpowder & Sky. Recent work includes the theatrical and festival campaigns for titles (and select Fantasia favorites) such as LORDS OF CHAOS, HER SMELL, SUMMER OF ’84, HEARTS BEAT LOUD, THE LITTLE HOURS, PROSPECT, HOUNDS OF LOVE and many more.

As a musician, journalist, speaker, programmer, editor, director and producer, Frédéric Temps created L'Étrange Festival de Paris in 1993, which has since become one of the major annual events related to genre film and deviant cinema. Since 2010, he is the director of les Utopiales de Nantes, the most important event in the world for SF in all its forms. Creator of the record label L'Étrange Sonothèque in 2004, he just released, in June 2019, a new album under the name of Tempsion, a multiform electronic music collective.

Kerensa Cadenas is a writer and editor based in New York and she’s currently a Movies Editor at Entertainment Weekly. She previously worked at Complex running the Pop Culture vertical there and then worked for both Cosmopolitan and Vanity Fair. She’s profiled people from Nick Jonas to Celine Sciamma, written about queer representations in film to questioning the comeback of the french manicure in 2018. She’s freelanced for publications like Vulture, The Cut, Seventeen, Esquire and others. Her main hobbies are screaming about Toni Collette, reading all the time and crying way too much.

Chelsea Lupkin is a director and cinematographer and has produced short films, comedy sketches, live productions, commercials, and documentaries for major media outlets including MTV, Delish, Elle, Elle Decor, VH1, and Fusion. Her last short horror film, LUCY’S TALE, premiered at the Fantasia International Film Festival in the “Born of Woman” program in 2018 and has since become an Official Selection of the Brooklyn Horror Film Festival, Knoxville Horror Film Fest, Chattanooga Film Festival, Buried Alive Film Fest, Final Girls Berlin Film Festival, Monster Fest, Etheria Film Night, and won Best Short Horror at the Winter Film Awards. Not only does Lupkin make short films, she is a Senior Programmer and editorial writer for the online film curation site Short of the Week. She is also the Creative Video Producer and an original member of Delish, an award-winning Hearst food site, producing a number of hit reality food shows across multiple platforms.

Justin is a co-founder of the arthouse genre sales company Yellow Veil Pictures. He’s the Programmer and Festival Director of both the Brooklyn Horror Film Festival and North Bend Film Festival, and his background comes from a mix of documentary and narrative filmmaking, with a focus on post production. He served as Editor and Head of Post Production on films such as GENERATION IRON (narrated by Mickey Rourke), DEATH METAL ANGOLA and JEREMY SCOTT: THE PEOPLE’S DESIGNER, and as the former theatrical distribution manager for FilmRise. He’s based in New York and has a long-time love of genre cinema, but his favorite movie will always be Rocky.

Diana Tapia was born and raised in Mexico City and has been living in Montreal since 2014. She’s a Film Animation graduate from Concordia and she’s passionate about film, and loves working in the film industry, whether it is animation, film or festivals! Diana has experimented with different animation techniques such as under-camera, pixilation, cut-out, and 2D. She currently works as Production Assistant at Cinesite Studios in the Feature Animation division, and has previous experience assisting production at ON Animation Studios for the project PLAYMOBIL: THE MOVIE. Diana strongly believes in advancing and supporting women in the animation industry, which is why she’s part of the Women in Animation - Montreal chapter. She also has worked at different festivals such as Cinema Politica Concordia, Art Matters Festival, Concordia Film Festival and more.

Alaska B (b 1984) is an interdisciplinary artist and musician. She holds a BFA (Concordia University, 2008, Interdisciplinary Studies in The Studio Arts) and a postgraduate degree in Computer Animation (Sheridan College, 2012). She is the drummer, producer and leader of the Polaris and Juno nominated group YAMANTAKA // SONIC TITAN, and won the 2019 Canadian Screen Award for Best Original Score.

Julien Deragon is a character/creature animator and an illustrator from Montreal, Canada. Currently working at Rodeo FX and previously at MPC, his animation work can be seen in multiple blockbuster movies and TV shows such as BUMBLEBEE, GAME OF THRONES, ALIEN COVENANT, A MONSTER CALLS and many others. His illustrations can be seen either in personal gallery exhibitions, on t-shirts or during live events throughout the year. You can see his work at: www.julienderagon.com

Jean-Philippe Bernier is a cinematographer and composer (member of LE MATOS) from Montreal. He signed the cinematography and the score of multiple web series, TV series, commercials, short films, and feature films such as TURBO KID and SUMMER OF 84.

Andy Belanger works as a freelance cartoonist/illustrator based in Montreal. He does work in the mainstream comic market, plus a wide variety of work for the Canadian film, television and video game industries. In the mainstream comics market Andy has worked for such publishers as D.C. comics, Windstorm, TKO, IDW, Boom, Valiant, Dynamite and Image Comics! Recent works include the sci-fi hit Southern Cross at Image comics with Becky Cloonan, Vampirella for Dynamite, The Simulationists, Mythopia, and Rattlehead for Heavy Metal Magazine with Grant Morrison, Duncan Trussell, Donny Cates and Dan Fogler, the WWE comics line for Boom Studios and at TKO, Andy will be doing art on Pound for Pound with Natalie Chaidez. Other works include Swamp Thing with Scott Snyder and Jeff Lemire for D.C. comics, and Friday the 13th for Wildstorm. Andy was Trailer Animator on FarCry 3 Blood Dragon for Ubisoft. In Montreal, Andy moonlights as a pro wrestler for IWS (International Wrestling Syndicate) under the name BOB “The Animal” Anger.

Lachapelle started karate when he was four years old. After a long career competing and giving seminars all around the world, he became world champion eight times in three different organizations, and won over 1000 trophies, medals and awards. He retired in 2004 and then began his career in stunts, being on a set for the first time in the movie 300 in 2005. Starting as a SSE, he then obtained his first stunt credit in 2006. He has worked alongside various international coordinators through the years — Jean Frenette really helped him understand the stunt coordinator’s job. Lachappelle coordinating movies and TV shows for a couple of years now. He was nominated for two World Stunt Awards, for his work in XMEN: DAYS OF FUTURE PAST (2015) and PUNISHER WAR ZONE (2009). He also won the ACTRA Award for Outstanding Stunt performer in 2010. Lachapelle has over 100 stuntwork and acting credits, including X-MEN, SUICIDE SQUAD, POMPEII, XXX, WHITE HOUSE DOWN and ARROW, to name a few.

Donato Totaro is the editor-in-chief of the longest running monthly online film journal Offscreen. He has been a part-time professor of Film Studies at Concordia University (Montreal, Canada) since 1990, and has published numerous articles on the horror cinema and other subjects, in books including ReFocus: The Films of Andrei Tarkovsky (forthcoming), Historical Dictionary of South American Films (2014), Cult TV (2010), 100 European Horror Films (2007), The Cinema of Japan and Korea (2004), Fear Without Frontiers (2003), and Guide to the Cinema(s) of Canada (2002).

Andrew Todd is a writer, filmmaker, composer, theatre practitioner, and cat-patter from New Zealand. His film and video game criticism can be read on Birth.Movies.Death, SlashFilm, Polygon, IGN, and VICE, while other career highlights include adapting THE TIME MACHINE for children, creating animations for a production of HEDWIG AND THE ANGRY INCH, and co-directing the weirdo no-budget drama GHOST SHARK 2: URBAN JAWS. Andrew is currently in development on multiple projects for stage and screen, including a second feature film. Once, he wept into Keanu Reeves' arms. It was beautiful.

Elijah Baron is a film critic and freelance translator. In 2014, he started writing for the student newspaper The Concordian, and became an editor the following year. The sense of euphoria he experienced when he first started producing film essays and discovering new worlds and auteurs, particularly in the context of festivals, has always remained. Since his graduation in 2016, he has collaborated with the film magazine 24 images, and became a member of the AQCC in 2017. He is mostly interested in the national cinema of the ex-USSR, Italy and South Korea.

Passionate about music, comics and cinema, Erik Canuel began his career by founding Kino Films with two colleagues, and specializing in videos and commercials. After working on a few television series, he finally found his way to the movies and in 2001, directed his first feature film, LA LOI DU COCHON. That was quickly followed by NEZ ROUGE, LE DERNIER TUNNEL, LE SURVENANT, and BON COP, BAD COP, which is the Canadian film with the highest theatrical attendance to date. He continues to shoot films and develop a multitude of film projects and television series.

After studying visual arts at University of Ottawa, and film at Concordia University, Martin Girard became a screenwriter and journalist. In cinema, he was a co-writer and dialogue writer for the feature film LE SECRET DE MA MÈRE, directed by Ghyslaine Côté, for which he received a Genie nomination in the Best Original Screenplay category in 2007. He also wrote the screenplay for the action film NITRO RUSH, directed by Alain Desrochers, released in the summer of 2016. Among his film projects in development are the feature film SEXPO 67, co-written with André Lavoie and produced by Attraction Images; the comedy ARMAND AND NOÉMIE, co-written with Chloé Cinq-Mars; the thriller TWILIGHT FOR A KILLER, produced by Megafun Inc. and co-written with Raymond St-Jean; JULIETTE AND LOVE, an ACPAV production co-written with Ghyslaine Côté; THE PACT, co-written with Raymond St-Jean and produced by Nicholas Comeau de Productions 1976; as well as SAINT-NARCISSE, co-written with Bruce LaBruce and also produced by Nicolas Comeau de Productions 1976 (a 2019 production).

RKSS, short for Roadkill Superstar, is a Canadian writer-director triforce formed by Anouk Whissell, François Simard and Yoann-Karl Whissell. Confirmed Fantasia kids, the trio and their craft first developed in the audience before being presented on the screen of the beloved festival. Their debut feature, the critically acclaimed TURBO KID (Frontières Film Market’s first baby), premiered at Sundance in 2015, launching a very successful festival run and winning 24 awards worldwide. In 2018, RKSS had the honour of returning to Sundance for the World Premiere of the trio’s second feature, SUMMER OF ’84. Acclaimed by the audience and major outlets such as Hollywood Reporter, Village Voice and Variety, the movie confirmed the trio’s insight, maturity and talent. Represented by GERSH and Echo Lake Entertainment, RKSS has numerous projects in development, including a sequel to TURBO KID. Driven by passion and the need to tell stories, RKSS is always on the lookout for inspiring projects.

Diplômé en études cinématographiques de l'Université de Montréal, Pascal Grenier a notamment travaillé pour le festival Fantasia à titre de programmateur pendant quelques années. Membre actif de l'Association québécoise des critiques de cinéma (AQCC), il collabore de façon régulière au webzine Cinéfilic et à la revue Séquences depuis plus de 10 ans. Depuis plus d’un an, il sélectionne et présente des films régulièrement pour l’organisme Douteux.org. Cinéphage enragé et collectionneur compulsif, il a écrit dans le Journal Métro et le Huffington Post. Enfin, il a aussi été sélectionné à quatres reprises pour faire partie d'un jury de la critique internationale (FIPRESCI).

Diplômé de Sciences Po-Paris dans les années 70, il y élargit sa cinéphilie. Critique puis membre du comité de rédaction de Séquences où il est toujours documentaliste, il a été également, pendant plus de dix ans, secrétaire de l'AQCC (Association québécoise des critiques de cinéma). Il a participé à plusieurs jurys pour l'AQCC et la FIPRESCI.

Sophie Leclair-Tremblay est une cinéphile en constante exploration. Fascinée par l’infini des possibilités qu’offre le septième art, elle a toujours perçu ce dernier comme le plus beau et le plus singulier moyen d’expression. Porteuse d’un vif intérêt pour les récits et les protagonistes empreints d’une grande complexité, elle admire les odyssées personnelles engendrées par un désir de solitude et d’exploration, la représentation des divers univers pouvant habiter l’être humain ne se sentant pas en phase avec la réalité. Sa curiosité sans bornes l’amène vers la découverte incessante des multiples genres et façons de raconter ayant façonné le septième art depuis sa naissance. Cette soif d’apprentissage contribue au perpétuel développement d’un rapport au cinéma dont elle souhaite marier le ressenti à son analyse critique.