As part of the Cannes Film Film Film market, the Fantastic 7 initiative has been for a few years as an essential showcase for the emerging talents of genre cinema. Created in partnership between the prestigious Sitges – International Fantastic Film Festival in Catalonia – and the film market, this program brings together seven renowned festivals, recognized for their commitment to genre cinema, each proposing a project carried by an author or an emerging author. On May 18, the latter will come to present their film projects to industry professionals – investors, distributors, commercial agents – in the hope of concretizing their dream of co -production and expanding the scope of their cinematographic vision.
Through this initiative, gender cinema asserts itself as a field of experimentation and renewal. By bringing together seven development projects each year, selected by as many festivals committed to the discovery of singular voices, Fantastic 7 becomes a hatching platform for filmmakers whose universes flirt with the strange, the worrying or the supernatural. The presence this year of Pablo Berger as a fantastic sponsor is brilliant proof: with his films on the border of the tale and the absurd – White or the recent My robot friend (Dreams robot) -, the Spanish filmmaker embodies this porosity between genres and this taste for daring stories, a trademark of the program.
The 2025 selection promises to be particularly eclectic and stimulating. From Spain to Mexico, from Iraq to South Korea, from Texas to China, passing through Estonia and Egypt, the selected projects transport to us in worlds where reality cracks, where fear reveals individual or collective trauma, where women occupy motor roles in stories of survival, curse or inner quest.
Among the most singular projects of this edition is Evil eye (ayin hara), Iraqi director Yasir Kareem, proposed by the Cairo International Film Festival (CIFF). The film, deeply rooted in the culture of the south of Iraq, mixes folk horror, ecology and female resistance. Dunia, the heroine, must find a mystical island to break a curse that dries up the rivers. Torn between love and duty, she faces invisible forces that threaten the land as much as hers.
This project, at the crossroads of mythology and anticipation, had been initially selected during the Cairo Film Connection, a project development platform organized within the framework of Cairo Industry Daysand intended to support Arab and African filmmakers. Since its creation, the Cairo Film Connection has asserted itself as an effective incubator for young voices of independent cinema, by connecting them to producers, distributors and international funds. Ayin Hara has therefore benefited from this upstream support before being appointed to officially represent the CIFF within the program Fantastic 7.
The announcement was welcomed by Hussein Fahmy, president of the CIFF, who said: “We are proud to be among the festivals chosen to name a project in Fantastic 7. We believe that” Ayin Hara “has a unique cinematographic voice and a distinct Arabic vision that deserve recognition and international support. »»
CIFF participation in Fantastic 7 is part of a broader dynamic of renewal of the place of Egypt in contemporary genre cinema, long absent from this very codified scene. Through the Yasir Kareem project, the Egyptian festival also affirms its ambition to reposition Arab creation in less awaited, more daring narrative forms, while opening up to complex political and spiritual stories.
Selection Fantastic 7 2025:
- 1999 | by David Casademunt | Horror / thriller.
Presented by the Sitges Festival.
Abel, an ordinary Barcelona, discovers that he was exorcised as a child. In search of the truth about this buried event, he changed in paranoia.
- Sisterhood | by Yoon Eunkyoung | Mystery / thriller
Presented by the Fantastic Film Festival of Bucheon.
A woman interferes in the fragile relationship between a novelist and her daughter, threatening the balance of a new blended home.
- Evil eye (ayin hara) | De Yasir Kareem | Folk horror
Presented by the Cairo International Film Festival
A young Iraqi woman faces an ancestral curse in a post-apocalyptic world, between love, sacrifice and ecosystem in danger.
- Cachorra | of Elisa Puerto Aubel | Horror / Science Fiction
Presented by the Guadalajara International Film Festival
A Mexican veterinarian discovers a clandestine experiment on the border by collecting a mysterious cub. To survive, she must kiss her primal instinct.
- Fuxi: joy in four chapters | of qiu jiongjiong | Horror / Comedy / Science Fiction / Erotic Thriller
Presented by Hkiff x HAF
Four fantastic stories shot under a circus marquee, between past and present, alive and dead, macabre feast and poetic celebration.
- MISTLETOE | De Emily Hagins | Body horror / Christmas horror
Presented by the SXSW Film & TV Festival
A demonic guy plant is attacking a group of teenage wakes up, feeding on their adolescent impulses and anxieties.
- The last moon | de Sean McConville | Supernatural thriller
Presented by the Pöff – Film Festival of the Noires of Tallinn
Tented in real time, this supernatural closed do.
This year, Egypt is back in force at the Cannes Film Festival. In addition to its noticed presence in Fantastic 7 through the project Evil eyethe country is represented in three sections of the festival: in Official competition with The Eagles of the Republicsigned by the Swedish director of Egyptian origin Tarik Saleh; in the a certain look section, with Aisha Can’t Fly Away Anymore of the young filmmaker Morad Mostafa ; and in ACID parallel section, with Life after Siham by Namir Abdel Messeeh. In addition, and it is a symbolic advance, Egypt has this year, for the first time for the first time, for a very long time, from a national pavilion to the film marketa sign of a desire for re -incorporation and visibility on the international scene.
Neïla Driss
