Fantastic Film Festival launch

Last night we saw the Australian premiere of Death of a Unicorn, screening for the launch of this year's Fantastic Film Festival (If you want to know what I thought of the movie that's what Letterboxd is for).

We discovered this festival back in 2023. We were staying in the south-eastern suburbs while our bathroom was being destroyed and rebuilt and we needed some respite from our temporary digs. Lido, the cinema in Glenferrie, had felt too far away until then. It's really not, it's just not as close as our stalwarts the Sun Theatre (Yarraville) and Cinema Nova (Carlton).

Our gateway movie in 2023 was the original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles complete with a scratch-and-sniff card for enjoying at certain points in the movie. TMNT provides a rich vein of smells: pizza, sewers and even farts. So you can imagine this was a very good time.

We ended up seeing Audition, Infinity Pool and The People's Joker that year and were completely sold on the festival. So in 2024 we got a five-film pass and saw Cannibal Mukbang, Dogman, Monisme, The Deep Dark and Divinity.

This year we are in the position where travel isn't really on the cards. Lottie the dog is in her dotage and doesn't cope very well when one or both of us is away. People still need holidays, so we decided we'd use our leave staying home and slamming the entire festival.

And that's what's going to happen starting in a few weeks. Now that the festival is launched we have seen the program and bought the VIP pass. I'm inordinately excited.