North American premiere
Selection 2023

Pandemonium

Directed by Quarxx

Hosted by Director Quarxx, Producer Martine Melloul.

France 2023 96 mins OV French Subtitles : English
Genre Horror

Nathan (Hugo Dillon) considers himself a good man, a good friend, a good husband to his late wife. All of this is challenged when he wakes up on the cold tarmac of an isolated mountain road, unable to remember how he got there. He’s not alone though. There is another man, Daniel (Arben Bajraktaraj), a cyclist, who is full of wild stories — stories about death, stories about horrific accidents — all of which are unsettling but only the start of Nathan’s troubles. It soon becomes clear that he has no other choice but to continue his journey by stepping through the mysterious door that suddenly appears in front of them, as if out of nowhere. Some of the souls he finds littered along the way are too far gone, their stories too monstrous to suggest there’s any going back for them. The question is, is Nathan one of them, or has it all been a big mistake like he seems to think?

Winner of Fantasia Festival’s 2016 Jury Prize for Best International Short for A NEARLY PERFECT BLUE SKY, writer/director Quarxx returns to the festival with his second feature film, PANDEMONIUM. Drawing on themes found in Dante’s Inferno and Milton’s Paradise Lost, the film is a multi-textured existential fantasy, topped with signature notes of visceral horror, disturbing fairy tale, wry comedy, and dark thriller. Exploring the many faces of death — suicide, murder, illness, accident — Quarxx dives deep into the notion of sin without redemption, the frailty of the human condition, especially madness and suffering, through the waking nightmare of one confused traveler who refuses to abandon all hope as he enters the gates of hell and confronts the demons within. – Kat Ellinger

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