Film Festival Catch-Up
by Ralph Lucas – Publisher
(October 20, 2022 – Toronto, ON) One of the problems, and it is a happy problem, is the crowded late year film festival season brings lots of news and we always have more news than we can get to. This is an attempt to quickly cover the highlights of a number of festivals that have ended recently, are just getting started or will launch shortly.
Just getting started: The imagineNATIVE Film + Media Arts Festival started two days ago. We reported on the 2022 festival in September.
The Toronto After Dark Film Festival launched last night with the new exorcism movie Prey For The Devil (pictured above). It was followed by the Canadian Premiere of H4Z4RD, a violent crime-action-comedy that wowed audiences at Fantastic Fest! Tonight at 7, the Sundance hit sci-fi mystery horror Something in the Dirt will be followed at 9.45PM, with The Lair, the latest sci-fi action horror from acclaimed genre director Neil Marshall. Toronto After Dark ends this Sunday, October 23. BTW, Prey For The Devil, aka The Devil’s Light, a Lionsgate release, opens just in time for Halloween, and costars Toronto-born Jacqueline Byers.
The St. John’s International Women’s Film Festival (SJIWFF) started last night with a screening of I Like Movies. Our Film Correspondent, Thom Ernst, wrote this about the film when it screened at TIFF, “The film is a funny and kind story of an unlikeable outsider (who I happened to like) who forms an unexpected friendship with his older, more thoughtful, and emotional superior boss at a local video store.”
The director of I Like Movies, Chandler Levack made an appearance at the Christina Parker Gallery in St. John’s earlier today. The SJIWFF festival ends October 23.
Launching shortly: The 6th annual CineFAM Film Festival returns Saturday October 22nd for its two day run at the Carlton Cinema in Toronto. The festival celebrates the “limitless imagination and bold original film stories by Canadian women and non-binary creators of colour.”
Devour! The Food Film Fest in Wolfville, Nova Scotia kicks off its 12th instalment next Monday. This year’s theme, The Future of Food. The festival spans 53 events over 7 days running from October 24th to 30th, 2022.
The Windsor International Film Festival has announced its jury for the WIFF Prize in Canadian Film. The festival starts next week and runs from October 27 to November 6 and the WIFF Prize will be handed out in person on October 30 at an award brunch.
Also opening on the 27th, Toronto’s Rendezvous with Madness Film Festival.
Recently ended: The Reel World Film Festival wrapped with an awards ceremony. You can watch the 52-minute ceremony online.
CinéFest wrapped earlier this month with its awards. Riceboy Sleeps was given the Outstanding Canadian Feature Award, which carries a $15,000 pize. The runner-up was the Québec film, Viking, but it was given the French Language Feature Film Award.
Click here for links to our list of October Film Festivals.
Ralph Lucas is the founder and publisher of Northernstars.ca. He began writing about film and reviewing movies while in radio in Montreal in the mid-1970s.
