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1. Kazakh Scary Tales (2025) by Adilkhan Yerzhanov Fantasia Film Review

Sluggish and slow-going but still immensely entertaining when it matters, “Kazakh Scary Tales” is a generally solid outing that offers enough to like as a fine introduction to Kazakhstan’s folklore. If you can get past the issue with the pacing, it’s a solid outing that most would appreciate. (Don Anelli)

2. Sham (2025) by Takashi Miike Fantasia Film Review

Despite these flaws, the result remains compelling. “Sham” presents a thought-provoking and emotionally charged account of a real-life media and judicial scandal. With his sharp direction, Miike turns this adaptation into a gripping and surprisingly poignant exploration of how truth can be manipulated, and how costly that manipulation can be for the individuals caught in its crosshairs. (Panos Kotzathanasis)

3. Holy Night: Demon Hunters (2025) by Lim Dae-hee Fantasia Film Review

Ultimately, “Holy Night: Demon Hunters” is heavy on action and light on exposition.

Having made over 100 feature films in his career, prolific Japanese filmmaker Takashi Miike has established a strong, distinctive style, yet he continues to challenge himself in exciting ways. Whether you are a fan of Miike looking to see the auteur step outside of his comfort zone or simply a cinephile looking for a taut legal drama, Sham is going to scratch that itch.

Sham Review

Based on a novel by Masumi Fukuda, Sham tells the story of a teacher who attempts to clear his name after being falsely accused by a pupil’s mother of excessive corporal punishment. While it pales in comparison to other movies with thematic similarities, such as Thomas Vinterberg’s The Hunt or Hirokazu Kore-eda’s Monster, Miike’s film is compelling and thoughtful enough to be effective in its own right.

For the most part, Miike’s typical maximalist tendencies are exchanged here for a more grounded approach,...

In 2003, a fourth-grade teacher in Fukuoka was accused of abusing a young boy of mixed American-Japanese heritage. The allegations included verbal racism, psychological torment, and even suggestions of suicide. The case ignited a national firestorm. Tabloids branded him a “murderous teacher,” while over 500 lawyers rallied to the boy’s cause in a ¥58 million civil suit. Yet, years later, investigative journalist Masumi Fukuda presented a very different picture. According to his findings, the accusations were built on fragile testimony, hearsay, and media-fueled hysteria. The teacher, who had no prior record of misconduct, became a scapegoat within a system more interested in satisfying public outrage than uncovering the truth. This is the real-life case that Takashi Miike dramatizes in “Sham,” based on Fukuda’s non-fiction book, in a courtroom-meets-family-and-school drama that employs the Rashomon effect.

Sham is screening at Fantasia International Film Festival

The story opens from the perspective of the mother,...

We tell jokes about how many films Steven Soderbergh makes. We tell jokes about how many films Hong Sang-soo makes. But never—ever—do we joke about how many films Takashi Miike makes, lest we be crushed under the weight of a cinematic sadist’s endless catalogue. Since his debut in 1991, Miike has directed well over 100 different productions across various platforms; just to grasp the magnitude of that number, the man has directed more than 10 Times as many projects as Quentin Tarantino across the same period.

Like Tarantino, Miike’s most famous works skew towards the bloodthirsty, but with a filmography that vast, one would assume—imagine, hope, pray—that such an endless sea would come with some variety. True enough, Miike’s oeuvre expands the whole gamut from J-horror to jidai-geki action, and with “Sham” (his second film and third project of 2025), the director takes a stab (this one...

Genndy Tartakovsky’s “Fixed,” from Sony Pictures Animation, an R-rated dog sex comedy bound for Netflix later this summer, will close Montreal’s Fantasia International Film Festival.

The news comes as Fantasia unleashed Thursday its third and final wave of feature films – over 125 features unspool from July 16 to Aug. 3, 2025— as well as details of its competitions and career-celebrating awards, the Fantasia Retro lineup and a rowdy pack of free daytime panels, launches and masterclasses.

The full programming schedule also goes live July 3; tickets go on sale July 4.

At separate events, Tartakovsky and composer Danny Elfman will be feted with a Cheval Noir Career Achievement Award. Elfman’s award event includes a special screening of 1993 classic “The Nightmare Before Christmas” preceded by the world premiere of Eddie Alcazar’s animated short “Bullet Time,” both scored by Elfman.

Also screening opening night, Lee Chang-hee (“The Vanished’) and Yusron Fuadi’s class-divide crime...

There’s no denying that Takashi Miike’s “Sham” is dramatically effective. However, it may be one of the rare courtroom thrillers that is, at times, too effective for its own good. One would think there’s no such thing, but the movie’s engrossing visual and tonal language is all about seeding doubt, a promise on which Miike over-delivers, resulting in a tale that remains in morally gray territory long after it means to.

The film is based on a real 2003 court case — and a subsequent book by journalist Masumi Fukuda — in which a Japanese elementary school teacher was accused of physically and emotionally tormenting a student, who allegedly came close to suicide. The student’s mixed American heritage (by way of a great grandparent) was the alleged focus of racist remarks, which the boy’s mother would bring to light with the help of diligent reporters, when the...

A workmanlike procedural that does more to suggest a Clint Eastwood drama than the kind of unhinged thriller one’s come to associate with great auteur Takashi Miike, Sham is surprisingly straightforward. The story follows a teacher accused of abusing a student and the ensuing fight to clear his name. Like an Eastwood drama, the focus is largely on its flawed central character; here it’s Seiichi Yabushita (Go Ayano), an elementary school teacher who harbors a bias towards Takuto (Miura Kira), a student of mixed Japanese-American heritage. In the opening sequence, he arrives on a rainy night in 2002 to his house for a parent-teacher conference with mother Ritsuko Himuro (Ko Shibasaki) and seemingly makes several off-color comments about the boy’s “mixed blood.”

This carries into the classroom when Seiichi disciplines the boy for not moving quickly enough. If this part of the story is not in dispute, his...

Long before the title card hits, Miike Takashi’s crime drama Sham is off like a shot. A team of lawyers approaches a courthouse in a mass of whipping coats, while primary school teacher Yabushita Seiichi (Ayano Gô) is met with a riot of flashbulbs from the ravening press as he arrives on the scene. Mere moments later, we’re already inside the courtroom, witnessing the testimony of Himuro Ritsuko (Shibasaki Kô), who recounts the abuses allegedly committed against her son (Miura Kira) by Mr. Yabushita in sordid detail.

The film’s opening is quintessential Miike, given the emotional and physical violence that Yabushita enacts with such cool, smiling sadism. The flashbacks certainly show us a monster, one who mocks Himuro’s son’s “tainted blood” (it’s purported that the child’s grandfather was American), lifts him by his ears until they tear at the lobes, and encourages him...

Summer is (almost officially) here! That means the Fantasia International Film Festival is inching ever closer. This year, the festival, which was recently included on Dread Central’s best film festivals on earth, will celebrate its upcoming 29th edition from July 16 through August 3, 2025, and today, we’re excited to share the second wave of titles coming to this year’s festival, as well as the recipient of their Canadian Trailblazer Award.

First, the festival opens with Ari Aster’s latest feature film, Eddington, which our Managing Editor, Josh Korngut, gave five stars out of Cannes. The film begins in May of 2020 when a standoff between a small-town sheriff (Joaquin Phoenix) and mayor (Pedro Pascal) sparks a powder keg as neighbor is pitted against neighbor in Eddington, New Mexico.

Canadian Tralblazer Award: George Mihalka

Fantasia will honor filmmaker George Mihalka with a 2025 Canadian Trailblazer award. Mihkala’s 40-year career in cinema...

As I recently mentioned, the Fantasia International Film Festival is one of the very best events to experience the latest and greatest genre films from around the world, and after having announced an impressive first wave last month, they're back with a second wave announcement that is packed with must-see offerings, from Ari Aster's Eddington to the world premiere of the Nyaight of the Living Cat anime series, and much more:

From the Press Release: The Fantasia International Film Festival will celebrate its upcoming 29th edition with an electrifying program of screenings, workshops, and launch events running from July 16 through August 3, 2025, returning to the Concordia Hall and J.A. de Sève cinemas, with additional screenings and events at Montreal’s Cinéma du Musée. Please note that the festival is now starting one day earlier than previously announced. The full film lineup will be revealed in early July, but in the meantime,...

The Fantasia International Film Festival will celebrate its upcoming 29th edition with an electrifying program of screenings, workshops, and launch events running from July 16 through August 3, 2025, returning to the Concordia Hall and J.A. de Sève cinemas, with additional screenings and events at Montreal’s Cinéma du Musée. The full film lineup will be revealed in early July, but in the meantime, Fantasia is excited to announce its select second wave of features.

All The Asian Titles In The Second Wave

A Takashi Miike Triple Threat! “Nyaight Of The Living Cat“, “Blazing Fists” And “Sham“

A perennial of the festival’s programming since its earliest days, and recipient of a Lifetime Achievement Award in 2016, maverick, genre-jumping Japanese director Takashi Miike makes his mark at Fantasia again this year with not one but three titles—including an adorable J-horror anime series, with World Premiere episodes!

Adapting the manga written by Hawkman and drawn by Mecha-Roots,...

Fresh from its Cannes Competition world premiere, Ari Aster’s Eddington will open the 29th Fantasia International Film Festival, which begins a day earlier than previously announced and runs in Montreal from July 16 to August 3.

Pedro Pascal and Joaquin Phoenix star in the tale of a stand-off between a small town sheriff and the mayor that ignites wider tensions in a New Mexico community. A24 will release in the US on July 18.

The second wave of titles announced on Thursday includes three new works from Japanese genre master Takashi Miike led by the world premiere of episodes from J-horror anime...

A festival so nice they announced it twice (with even more to come), the Fantasia International Film Festival returns to Montréal for its 29th edition, July 16 — August 3. Yes, the 16th, not the 17th. Since announcing the festival’s first wave of titles in early May, organizers have added a day to accommodate for the hundreds of features and shorts they’ll be showing this summer.

Leading the pack is Ari Aster’s fourth feature, “Eddington,” which will open the festival with a special screening. From A24, the modern Western — starring Joaquin Phoenix and Pedro Pascal as candidates in a heated mayoral race — was met with generally warm reviews after its world premiere at Cannes. IndieWire’s David Ehrlich described the film as a “‘No Country for Old Men’ riff that hinges on mask mandates and the murder of George Floyd.” He praised Aster’s ambition, the timeliness of the material,...

When a young student shows signs of trauma, his parents act swiftly against his middle school teacher. But all may not be as it seems, leading the scales of justice to tip in fascinating, heartbreaking ways. [Source: 2025 Tribeca Festival]

Takashi Miike tackles the movie adaptation of the 2007 true-crime novel “Fabrication: The Truth About The ‘Murder Teacher’ in Fukuoka” by journalist Masumi Fukuda. The cast includes Go Ayano, Kou Shibasaki and Kazuya Kamenashi. Sham will have its world premiere at the Tribeca Festival on June 9, 2025 and is slated for a theatrical release in Japan on June 27, 2025.