Fantasia bestows its 2024 Canadian Trailblazer Award on visionary filmmaker Vincenzo Natali, whose landmark 1997 debut CUBE blew open the doors on what became a new wave of individual and provocative Canuck genre works (including John Fawcett’s GINGER SNAPS, Jen and Sylvia Soska’s AMERICAN MARY, and countless more) in addition to siring both a film franchise and a Japanese remake. Natali went on to make the equally idiosyncratic and quite underrated science fiction films CYPHER and NOTHING, the latter reuniting him with CUBE stars David Hewlett, Andrew Miller, and Maurice Dean Wint, the first of whom has appeared in nearly all of Natali’s features. He’s had his biggest hit to date with the brilliant sci-fi/horror creation SPLICE; helmed the intriguing ghost story HAUNTER, the nightmarish Netflix Original IN THE TALL GRASS, based on the novella by Stephen King and Joe Hill; and has since been busy on blockbuster series like NBC’s HANNIBAL, FX’S THE STRAIN, HBO’S WESTWORLD, BBC America & Bell Media’s ORPHAN BLACK, Starz’s AMERICAN GODS, and Netflix’s LOCKE & KEY, HEMLOCK GROVE, LUKE CAGE and GUILLERMO DEL TORO’S CABINET OF CURIOSITIES.
Vincenzo Natali will receive Fantasia’s 2024 Canadian Trailblazer Award on Tuesday, July 30 before the World Premiere of the Canadian Film Centre’s new 4K restoration of CUBE, the film that started it all. Joining us for the festivities with be one of the filmmaker’s key creative collaborators from across his career, actor David Hewlett.
