Festivals - Gerardmer 2023: A double presidency for an anniversary edition

By Mulder, 24 november 2022

This year, the Gerardmer festival will celebrate thirty years of horror, fright, mystery and open windows on the imaginary world. Thirty years that have allowed the Gérardmer International Fantastic Film Festival to establish itself as the Convention of the genre, enshrining trends and anticipations, federating a loyal, committed and passionate audience, ́ and every year, newcomers, warmly welcomed by the volunteers.

"This 30th anniversary of the Gérardmer Festival makes room for a duo of crazy film lovers .Through this exceptional presidency carried by these two genius players, lovers of a cinema that refuses limits and cherishes the childhood of art, it is to the joy of sharing and artistic complicity that we invite the public to celebrate 30 years of love of the fantastic in the heart of the Vosges."  - Bruno Barde, director of the festival

This anniversary is an opportunity to look back at the past to question the future of fantasy creation. Before the digital era, the Belgian film Thomas est amoureux by Pierre-Paul Renders triumphed and anticipated the era of videoconferencing. Wes Craven's masks and Dario Argento's giallo terrorized us. The New Zealand director Peter Jackson, before directing The Lord of the Rings, won the hearts of festival-goers with Celestial Creatures, the Korean Kim Jeewoon made his classes in the Vosges before triumphing with his Two Sisters. Guillermo del Toro, Alex de la Iglesia, Jaume Balaguer ́ o, Paco Plaza, ́ J.A. Bayona, Hideo Nakata, Eli Roth grew up with us and opened the secret doors of their deepest nightmares... We even discovered at Gérardmer that there was poetry in vampires (Tomas Alfredson's Morse) and that fantasy had elegance and grace (David Robert Mitchell's It Follows) without forgetting the raw horror of the new Anglo-Saxon guard led by Andres Muschietti, Jennifer Kent, Alex Garland, Rose Glass or ́ Brandon Cronenberg and the French genre cinema with notably Christophe Gans, Alexandre Aja, Xavier Gens, Pascal Laugier, Lucile Hadzihalilovic or Julia Ducournau.

Gérardmer is betting on the next thirty years, taking into account the multiplication of screens, their shape, their brightness, and their capacity ́ é to interpret the fantasies of filmmakers from all over the world. For tomorrow to be fantastic!

(soruce : Press release)