Tributes

We’re sad to announce that due to the SAG-AFTRA strike, Nicolas Cage will no longer be able to attend the festival next weekend. We’ll be updating our website regularly as we receive news from other announced guests while circumstances evolve. Our hearts are with the actors, as well as with the WGA, and we hope to see the unions get a fair deal soon.

Cheval Noir Career Award 2023: Nicolas Cage

H.I. McDonnough. Ronny Cammereri. Peter Leow. Sailor Ripley. Ben Sanderson. Cameron Poe. Yuri Orlov. Sean Archer & Castor Troy. Charlie & Donald Kaufman. Big Daddy. Joe Ransom. Red Miller. Robin Feld. Nick Cage. Dracula.

Most actors’ careers are filled with movies, but Nicolas Cage’s career is filled with people. Not mere characters who simply populate a story but people, almost always real and identifiable even in extreme situations, who are the story’s raison d’etre. In over 40 years in film, Nicolas Cage has brought a wide variety of unforgettable people to life in works that are as memorable as the characters he portrayed, with textured performances that have been among the most exciting and unique from anyone in the last four decades. More so than that, Cage is drawn to films and filmmakers that take these people (and the audiences) on unforgettable, often risk-taking journeys, be they in dark dramas (LEAVING LAS VEGAS, BRINGING OUT THE DEAD, JOE, PIG), wild comedies (RAISING ARIZONA, VAMPIRE’S KISS), action favourites (CON AIR, FACE/OFF), or such fearless masterworks as WILD AT HEART and MANDY, films that mix the true and the fantastic into indelible works of popular and cinematic art. And now, at the world premiere of SYMPATHY FOR THE DEVIL and another classic Cage performance, Fantasia is honoured to present this year’s Cheval Noir Career Award to this remarkable performer responsible for bringing life to some of the most fascinating people to grace the big screen in some of the most extraordinary films ever made.

Canadian Trailblazer Award 2023: Larry Kent

Fantasia is proud to be giving our 2023 Canadian Trailblazer Award to Larry Kent, Canada’s first underground feature filmmaker and a godfather of CDN independent cinema.

Cited by David Cronenberg as “a heroic figure,” Larry Kent made films “so ahead of their time” (to quote Atom Egoyan) that they eventually fell out of official circulation.

Situated somewhere between the vivid indie dramas of John Cassavetes and the lurid melodramas of Doris Wishman, with atypical protagonists and narratives that compassionately (and confrontationally!) addressed a multitude of social issues, Kent’s films brought new vitality to Canadian cinema — and time has only added to their potency. Kent’s legendary 1963 debut, the raw and provocative THE BITTER ASH, was a complete gamechanger, being the first fully independently-made feature produced in the country, a genuine Canadian “beat” moment, leading to acclaim and condemnation as police seized prints and a new breed of artists were inspired to pick up Bolexes. With 1971’s THE APPRENTICE (FLEUR BLEUE), Kent made Canada’s first bilingual feature, casting Steve Fiset opposite Susan Sarandon as his leads. He continues to make singular and gutsy independent features, his most recent works, EXLEY (2011) and SHE WHO MUST BURN (2015) having both World Premiered at Fantasia, the latter winning Spectacular Optical’s 2015 Barry Convex Award for Best Canadian Feature at the festival.

Whether audiences have caught up with Kent’s uncompromising vision or not, Canadian International Pictures have been working on an ambitious restoration initiative that aims to resurrect his most seminal films, starting with the Vancouver Trilogy: THE BITTER ASH (1963), SWEET SUBSTITUTE (1964), and WHEN TOMORROW DIES (1965), all three of which will be unveiled at the festival in special 4K projections. Fantasia also will be presenting a rare 35mm print of YESTERDAY (GABRIELLE) (1981) and a special screening of SHE WHO MUST BURN, the latter of which has become particularly topical to revisit in light of the U.S.’s shocking overturning of Roe V Wade.

Larry Kent will be awarded at our showing of THE BITTER ASH on Monday, July 24, which will kick off the screening series. In addition, we will be presenting a career-spanning artist talk with the filmmaker, moderated by author and professor Dr. David Douglas, on Tuesday, July 25.

Join us in celebrating the career of one of Canadian Film’s boldest originals!

Presented in association with Canadian International Pictures and the Cinémathèque Québécoise.