Gérardmer International Fantastic Film Festival 2016 - What to Watch?

JoRafCinema is very glad to be able to participate this year for the first time to one of the most famous Fantastic Film Festivals in Europe, the biggest in France, successor of the famed Avoriaz Festival: The Gérardmer International Fantastic Film Festival.
It will take place between January 27th and 31st in the small ski resort of Gérardmer at the center of the French Vosges mountain range.
As with all the festivals we attend, JoRafCinema will review all the movies seen and provide a summary at the end, but today is just an appetizer to the festival in the form of recommendation of movies to watch.

The website of the festival is http://www.festival-gerardmer.com/
In particular the list of films to watch is divided in several selections and their description can be found in the Press file: http://festival-gerardmer.com/download/2016/GERARDMER2016.pdf
The full timetable is available here: http://festival-gerardmer.com/download/2016/depliant2016.pdf

JoRafCinema is planning to watch all movies in the official selection:

• We are looking forward to see Kurt Russell playing a sheriff (as in Tarantino's The Hateful Eight), going after cannibals in Bone Tomahawk.
• Évolution by Lucile Hadzihalilovic, screenplay writer of Gaspard Noe's Enter the Void, with a story of children and mothers living near the sea below a hospital in which strange events occur.
• February, apparently a supernatural chilling thriller with two young girls, directed by son of Anthony Perkins (Norman Bates in Hitchcock's Psycho). The atmosphere could be good.
• Frankenstein with Carrie-Ann Moss from the director of Candyman. An original adaptation of the classic story?
• Howl: a British movie about a train passengers stopped in the forest and attacked by creature. That could be fun.
• JeruZalem: an Israeli found footage filmed in CinemaScope, about anthropology students in the city invaded by Zombies. Sold as "after World War Z" but I fear it will be far less impressive.
• Southbound: An anthology composed of five segments. I like this format.
• The Devil's Candy: in a Texan farm, a man will have to face demoniac forces. Directed by Sean Byrne whose previous movie The Loved Ones has success in festivals.
• The Witch by Robert Eggers, director of a Nosferatu also successful in festivals.
• What we become, sold as the Danish zombie equivalent to what Morse was with Vampires (and featuring children) in Norway. I was recommended this movie by a friend although I am not very excited by the topic.

Besides the official selection we intend to see the following:

• La Rage du Démon: a documentary about a mysterious lost movies by George Méliès, which topic reminds me of Häxan.
• Creatures designers: The Frankenstein complex: a documentary by Mad Movies editors Poncet & Penso about monsters making in cinema.
• Lost Soul: The Doomed Journey of Richard Stanley's Island of Dr. Moreau: another documentary, this one about the failed making of the movie by Richard Stanley with Marlon Brando. This topic reminds of Lost in La Mancha.
• Silent Night (dating already from 2012): could be fun with its killing Santa in a town hosting a Santa parade.
• Burying the Ex by Joe Dante (Gremlins, Small Soldiers, The Hole) holds the promise to spend a good moment
• and I am very curious to see The Shamer's daughter, a Danish heroic fantasy movie about a girl who can make people confess their crimes. Knights, witches and dragons are on the menu of the possible first movie in a trilogy.

But by lack of time or interest I will miss the others:

• Summer Camp: everything is in the title. Apparently between REC and Evil Dead, the story reminds me more of Eli Roth's Cabin Fever. The director wrote the excellent Sleep Tight.
• Cooties and its high school zombies, played at Sundance 2014, doesn't attract me much in spite of the presence of Elijah Wood (The Lord of the Rings, Maniac).
• Same remark about the missing child story in Pay the Ghost in spite of Nicolas Cage in the cast.
• Le Fantôme de Canterville is a French movie sold as horror for kids, by the director of the La guerre des boutons.
• Sweet Home, the story of a couple in an abandoned building with a band of killers.
• We are still here about a haunted house in a creepy village.
• I will regret missing American Hero (as closing movie) and its reluctant superhero who only wants to see his son (which reminds me of both Hancock and Big Man Japan)

I will avoid spending five hours at the "Nuit décalée" to see Freaks of Nature, Lovemilla and a Sharknado 3 that I already know to be bad and too long. I am however planning on going to the Animation double feature showing the two-hour Harmony (post-apocalyptic trip of two girls) and The Empire of Corpses, a uchronia about some Frankenstein diaries taking place in 18th century London.
The festival will present retrospectives around two directors: the regretted Wes Craven with Scream, Nightmare on Elm Street and The people under the Stairs from 1991 (I will try to see that last one which I don't know), and the particular Alejandro Jodorowski with the excellent El Topo, La Montagna Sagrada and Santa Sangre, plus his recent La Danza de la Realidad (2013) which I haven't seen yet but will try to correct that.
Moreover the festival features a competition of five short movies that I will try to see. And of course there will be plenty of side events to the festival.

Stay tuned starting on Wednesday for the reviews of this marathon of film!