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Stars: Rose Deghan, Chloë MacLeod, Victoria Wardell, Talisa Mae Stewart, Ashkan Nejati, Maryam Sadeghi | Written and Directed by Ava Maria Safai

In the opening moments, writer/director Ava Maria Safai effectively establishes the 2004 setting of her feature debut, Foreigner. This is achieved through a retro-looking advertisement recorded on videotape, as the grainy ad for blonde hair dye promotes “fitting in” with friends. It serves as a solid lead-in to the story of Yasamin (Rose Deghan), an Iranian teenager new to Canada, who wishes to fit in with her peers.

Her first day at a new high school catches the attention of a pastel coloured clique, led by the beguiling Rachel...

Ava Maria Safai’s Foreigner demonstrates just how potent it can be when the metaphor is rooted in lived experience. Set in 2004, at the height of the airbrushed, body-shaming teen-magazine era, this clever debut blends coming-of-age drama with supernatural chills, and does so with an eye on a very particular truth: the sheer terror of trying to fit in when you are young, different, and desperate to belong.

Our heroine is Yasamin (Rose Dehgan), an Iranian teenager who has just moved to Canada with her father and grandmother. Already reeling from the loss of her mother, Yasi throws herself into learning English through sitcoms and magazines, mimicking the Western ideals...

Yasamin (Yasi), a recently immigrated Iranian teen in Canada, struggles to fit in at her new high school. She falls in with a clique of white girls whose subtle racism pressures her to erase her identity. Desperate to belong, Yasi transforms herself to match Western ideals, even dyeing her hair blonde. But as she distances herself from her culture and family, a dark force tied to her fading heritage begins to surface, threatening both her loved ones and her new life.   Ava Maria Safai said about their debut feature film, Foreigner, that it is a blend of comedy and horror meant for the tween age group. There isn't a whole lot of in-between horror for this age group. They may get a few things...

[Read the whole post on screenanarchy.com...]...

“Foreigner” (2025), written and directed by Ava Maria Safai, follows a classic coming-of-age tale. It’s about a young girl moving to a new school and trying to fit in there. On the surface, it revolves around her struggle to find someone who would let her be a part of their clique. That’s how she crosses paths with three girls in her class. They are popular and outspoken. In contrast, she is rather reserved. So, the film almost feels like “Mean Girls” all over again. However, it’s far from being a rehash. Instead, it is a visceral exploration of what it feels like to be an outsider when you’re reminded that you don’t belong, every waking minute.

As the title suggests, the film is about an immigrant experience. It follows Yasamin (Rose Dehghan), an Iranian teenager, who moves to Canada with her family: her father Ali (Ashkan Nejati), and her grandmother,...

A retro teen horror with a sharp cultural edge, Foreigner is set to make its world premiere at Fantasia Film Festival on 31 July, followed by its UK debut at FrightFest on 22 August. The debut feature from Canadian-Iranian director Ava Maria Safai, the film draws on her personal experience of immigration and assimilation, channelling it into a pastel-tinted horror that blends comedy, possession, and social critique.

Set in 2004, Foreigner follows Yasamin Karimi, or Yasi, a teenage Iranian immigrant navigating the volatile social minefield of a new Canadian high school. Desperate to belong, she learns English by watching her favourite sitcoms and attempts to win the approval of her school’s popular clique. But after dyeing her hair blonde in a bid to mirror their image, Yasi unwittingly invites something else into her life – a dark presence that takes root in her quest for acceptance.

Rose Dehgan stars as Yasi in her breakout role,...

Several films screening at this year’s Fantasia International Film Festival explore the idea that teen girls are not alright, including The Serpent’s Skin, Foreigner, and Lucid.

Read on for my capsule reviews of all three films.

The Serpent’s Skin

Scripted by Alice Maio Mackay and co-writer Benjamin Pahl Robinson, The Serpent’s Skin follows trans girl Anna (Alexander McVicker) as she moves to the big city. There she meets weird, but decent Danny (Jordan Dulieu) and goth tattoo artist Gen (Avalon Fast), sleeping with and befriending both as a dark, serpentine power begins attacking people. Think The Craft meets Scanners.

Mackay’s bold colour scheme, elliptical editing, and counter culture attitude are all present in The Serpent’s Skin, but the narrative moves at a more deliberate pace than her previous films, which allows the characters time to breathe between set pieces.

Featuring genuine chemistry between McVicker and Fast, the return...

There’s no such thing as “too much” in Montreal, but Fantasia Fest is long no matter how you slice it. Running from July 16 to August 3, the annual genre event in Québec celebrates its 29th edition this year — though it used to cover even more of the calendar.

The beloved summer film festival began in 1996 as a means of connecting Canadian cinephiles with cutting-edge films from the Asian market. Back then, audiences had several years of movies to catch up on, but now, Fantasia fuels almost three weeks of programming with stories curated from around the globe.

“Genre” filmmaking covers any highly stylized cinematic work that plays on specific tropes from sci-fi, horror, fantasy — you name it. Fantasia lures all kinds of artistic voices into its purple-hued embrace, presenting its own world premieres alongside top titles that previously played SXSW, Sundance, Tribeca, FrightFest, Sitges, and Overlook. What does well here...

Foreigner Photo: Saarthak Taneja

One of the highlights of this year’s Fantasia International Film Festival, Ava Maria Safai’s Foreigner is the story of Yasmin, an Iranian teenager transplanted to Canada who is desperate to fit in. Seduced by a blizzard of adverts and befriended by a group of girls who are as studiously self-conscious as they are critical of her, she begins to transform herself to suit her new surroundings – but might she, in doing so, be placing herself in danger? It’s a sometimes funny, sometimes creepy piece of work full of smart observations, and I was glad to have the opportunity to talk to Ava about how it came to be.

“I was born in Vancouver,” she tells me. “It's my parents who immigrated here. But I still felt that duality very strongly growing up, because I would go to school and everything would be one way.

While the oeuvre of Toronto director David Cronenberg, the maestro of body horror, has inspired generations of Canadian filmmakers (including his progeny) and continues to do, Montreal’s Fantasia Festival and its Frontières Market event put them face-to-face with the global genre community – not to mention rabid local audiences – in a red-carpet-free cinema hotzone.

10 years in the making, Félix Dufour-Laperrière’s “Death Does Not Exist” (“La mort n’existe pas”), his third animated film and the only Canadian feature to world-premiere at Cannes this year, receives its North American and local premiere July 17.

Dufour-Laperrière has made all his animated films with the same small team out of the Montreal studio he runs with his brother Nicolas. “We’re coming from the Quebec film scene, which has a strong relationship with documentary, animation, alternative fiction, alternative means of production,” he told Variety.

“The subject matter [of ‘Death Does Not Exist’] might be difficult, but it is made with total honesty,...

FrightFest 2025 returns to London’s Odeon Luxe Leicester Square from 21 to 25 August with a heady mix of world premieres, restored classics and electrifying genre films. And excitingly, this year Love Horror will be media partners for the event!

The festival opens with the UK premiere of James DeMonaco’s The Home and closes with Kurtis David Harder’s social-media nightmare Influencers, bookending five days of horror, fantasy and dark fantasy across seven screens. Full Festival Passes go on sale Saturday 12 July at noon, with day tickets available from Saturday 19 July.

Opening night sees comedian-turned-thesp Pete Davidson as Max in The Home, a tense tale of community service gone wrong at a retirement home under siege by unseen terrors. The closing night screening of Influencers brings Shudder’s hit series to the big screen as social-media chameleon CW manipulates followers into perilous games of Fomo. These two high-profile premieres are joined...

Exclusive: Raven Banner has picked up world sales and distribution rights to the Fantasia Film Festival title Foreigner by filmmaker Ava Maria Safai.

The film was written, edited, and directed by Safai. The film’s official synopsis reads: Fantasia is set in the age of low-rise jeans and flip phones, where a Persian teen, Yasamin (Rose Dehgan), immigrates to a new country with her family. Trying desperately to fit in with her new clique, she dyes her hair blonde — and invites a sinister force into her life.

“Ava Maria Safai is a bold new voice in horror, who brings a fearless new perspective to the screen,” Raven Banner’s Managing Partner, Michael Paszt, said in a statement. “Not only has she announced herself as a talent to watch in Canada, but internationally as well. We’re proud to be working with Ava and her team.”

Safai is a Canadian-Iranian multidisciplinary artist based in Vancouver.

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...