Tag: Coming of Age

Our Ultimate Guide is Here! Spotlighting All The Essential Fantasia Film Festival 2026 Shorts You Can’t Miss

Fantasia Film Festival 2026’s shorts programs reveal a strong thread of folklore, mythology, cultural traditions, and strange discoveries. And in part one of a week long guide, we dive into which works we’re very eager to see:

Fantasia Film Festival 2026 poster
Event runs from July 16 to August 2, 2026. Montreal, Quebec.

In addition to a lot of cake, I believe Fantasia Film Festival 2026 has plenty of other treats in store for those headed to Montreal! Not only is this the festival’s 30th anniversary, but the programmers have pulled out all the stops to make every section feel special. Returning favourites like Hayop Ka! (review link) appear in the retro lineup, while three outstanding documentaries celebrate the craft of filmmaking. And yes, I’m sure plenty of fans will be cheering for The Origins of Ultraman too!

Before I get to my top twenty picks of the festival, I want to shine a spotlight on the various short film programs. While I haven’t had the chance to see every entry yet, I’ll be keeping an eye on YouTube and other streaming platforms to see which shorts become available internationally after the festival. Great discoveries don’t always come through the festival circuit alone. Sometimes they’re quietly waiting to be found online by those willing to dig a little deeper.

Along with a summary of each film, I’ve marked the title that has my attention with an image. Together, these selections reveal one of the biggest trends I noticed this year: folklore, mythology, and cultural traditions are woven throughout many of Fantasia’s short film programs.

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Avalon Fast’s CAMP: Is It Girl Horror, Folk Horror, or Something More?

Our CAMP review looks at Avalon Fast’s latest girl horror film, a coming-of-age story of grief, ritual, witchcraft, and uneasy friendships.

Camp Avalon Fast PosterFor Upcoming Camp Screenings, Please Check Below.

If you’ve spent any time in the darker corners of Canadian indie cinema lately, the name Avalon Fast may already have reached you. Whether that is her legal name or the identity she wants the masses to latch onto, honestly, it is a cool name to have. It invites word association: Mention Avalon and most people will think of King Arthur. And, for a particular generation, Morgaine le Fay is a figurehead to remember because of Marion Zimmer Bradley’s novel. That does not necessarily say anything about Fast herself, but after Honeycomb and CAMP, it is hard to unsee when this talent’s works leans on folk horror, witchcraft, and feminine ritual.

After her debut with the former, which focused on all-girl power, and her latest which carries similar themes but with more of a folk bent, I found myself wanting to queue up The Eagles’ “Witchy Woman.” As it played during the incantations near the climax, that personal added texture made the film sing for me rather than drag. Fast prefers to call her style “girl horror,” and when her concepts focus on identity, grief, and reconciliation, what appears on screen does not feel especially supernatural or mysterious at all. That’s unless the people at Bohemian Grove are looking to lodge a complaint.

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The Fires Won’t Always Be Burning with Bat Out of Hell The Musical and a Varied Cast

A filmed version of Bat Out of Hell The Musical delivers all the bombast, noise, and mythic swagger Jim Steinman fans could want, but the attempt to shape his greatest hits into a coherent dystopian love story remains uneven.

Bat Out of Hell The MusicalPlaying on BroadwayHD

Watching the streaming broadcast of Bat Out of Hell The Musical feels a bit like riding a phantom bike that needs to brake now and then. Jim Steinman’s work is as bombastic as expected, even though the story is essentially a dystopian remix of Streets of Fire. That connection is no accident, since Steinman also penned the anthems for that rock and roll fable.

While the songs from Meat Loaf’s landmark 1977 album remain thunderous and mythical, this filmed stage production shows how difficult it is to build a consistent narrative around music originally written as stand-alone set pieces.

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Wanda John-Kehewin’s Powerful Visions From The Fire Looks Toward Healing

In Visions From The Fire, Damon Quinn’s search for identity deepens through dreams, spirits, and painful truths. Wanda John-Kehewin and Nicole Marie Burton shape a thoughtful second chapter that blends coming-of-age drama with Indigenous spirituality and quiet emotional power.

Visions From The Fire Graphic Novel Cover_544x838
Volume Two is available on Amazon USA

HighWater Press

Wanda John-Kehewin and Nicole Marie Burton’s graphic novel The Dream series is beginning to take shape. With the release of the second volume, Visions From The Fire, the next stage of Damon Quinn’s journey is becoming clear. What’s presented here is more than a traditional coming-of-age story. To appreciate where it is heading, though, it helps to begin with the first book, Visions of the Crow.

Here, Damon feels like a ne’er-do-well, struggling simply to survive as high school graduation draws near. It is easy to sympathize with him. At school, he is bullied because of his mixed heritage. As a Cree-Métis teen, he is left wrestling with questions of identity and belonging. He does not know who his father is, and he desperately wants answers. At home, his relationship with his mother is strained by her alcoholism, often leaving him to spend as little time there as possible.

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Unleashing Colum Eastwood’s The Morrigan. Just Who Is This Phantom Queen?

A slow-burn folk horror with teeth, The Morrigan reframes the goddess as something older and sharper than pop culture’s “wicked sorceress” shortcut. Through a mother and daughter caught in a modern system built to drain women dry, the film turns possession into sovereignty, and rebellion into something sacred and brutal.

2025 The Morrigan Movie PosterCineverse
Now on VOD and Digital

The worship of the Morrígan is nearly as old as time, dating back to roughly 3000 BC. In terms of raw elemental power, she rivals a force like Gaia, the very breath and blood of the land itself. Yet, history has been unkind to her. In Irish lore, she was a terrifyingly complex sovereign; in modern literature, her role was flattened to fit the needs of the “wicked sorceress” trope. While pop culture often lazily grafts her onto Arthurian legend, those who hold The Mists of Avalon as the best may need to head back to school to “unlearn” the sanitized version of the goddess they’ve been sold.

Colum Eastwood’s expansion of his short film proves he’s done the homework. He frames the Morrígan not as a simple adversary, but as a goddess of death, regeneration, and rebirth. This is the core belief of Fiona (Saffron Burrows), a woman battling a modern world designed to “steal a lady’s thunder.” The film’s strongest thematic tissue lies in the parallel between the ancient and the modern: Fiona is reeling from a husband who has abandoned her and their daughter, Lily (Emily Flain), while being professionally bled dry by Professor Jonathan Horner (Jonathan Forbes). He is a leech who steals from his TAs while the world turns a blind eye.

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Stranger Things. The Full Series in Review

After a long rewatch of Stranger Things, I look at what worked and what did not when creating the threat that would manifest in the small town of Hawkins. Thankfully, for those in the know, no foothold was made, but is this truly the end?

Stranger Things LogoWhen Stranger Things first arrived on Netflix, it began with something wonderfully small. It seemed to be simply about a group of kids playing a game of Dungeons and Dragons, and not expecting that world to manifest around them! After the sudden absence of Will (Noah Schnapp), they had to learn how to become heroes for real. Even though the adults didn’t believe what they’ve encountered is real, what they managed to do was the impossible: to show that dangers lurk in every corner. The shadows are alive, and the necrophagous shadows, well….

From that moment, the series evolved naturally from childhood rituals into becoming adults. As for the fantasy characters they wanted to become, all the visual motifs (including a garbage can lid modified to become a shield) came into place. And the monsters they had to face weren’t just creatures. They were metaphors to something greater shaped by the kids’ references to concepts and entities from this role playing world. Some worked, and others did not, but overall, unless the viewer was in the know, the tie-ins were more than surface level references.

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