I took a week off and went to my favorite Austin film festival, Fantastic Fest! It’s the 20th year of this genre (fantasy, horror, science fiction, action, and cult) film festival started back in 2005. The movies range from the ultra weird obscure foreign films to the breakthrough hits (Zombieland, John Wick, The Babadook, and Smile for example). I started going in 2009 with fellow gamer Chris and have attended on and off since (2009, 2010, 2011, 2015, the online-only 2020, 2023, 2024, and 2025). It’s always a good time – you see some complete trash and you see some movies better than anything that would normally hit the theater in your city that become your favorites of all time.
You can check out my writeups of previous years (of varying length and detail). The TL;DR is my top 10 movies I enjoyed the most from prior years are:
- Fish Story, a Japanese movie about a punk song that saves the world. It is beautiful.
- 13 Assassins, the best modern day samurai movie by a wide margin. TOTAL MASSACRE!!!
- Sound of Noise, a Swedish film about guerrilla musicians and the tone deaf cop from a famously musical family who’s after them
- Green Room, where a punk band runs afoul of Nazis, as they do (with Patrick Stewart as lead Nazi!)
- Kill, an Indian (Sikh) movie that is “Die Hard on a Train” with super impressive action
- Animalia, a Moroccan arthouse movie that is beautiful and deep
- Riddle of Fire – like a 1970s live action Disney movie, and absolutely hilarious
- Planet B – a frighteningly realistic “VR Guantanamo” scenario in a French near future sci-fi thriller
- Daniela Forever – Nacho Vigalondo’s take on an Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind type situation
- Sister Midnight – a newly married bride in Mumbai’s life goes from trying to boring to weird
If you watch those you’ll have a good time and also get a taste of the breadth of offerings at the fest.
Here’s a letterboxd list of the 2024 features as a bonus.
I’ll cover the fest day by day! Here’s the cool stained glass “Saint Chingu” theme this year:
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