Ghost Town Anthology
2019 | 97 minutes | Canada
Director: Denis Côté
Writer: Denis Côté
Language: French
Berlin International Film Festival 2019, Competition
Set in tiny Irénée-les-Neiges, Quebec (population: 215), Ghost Town Anthology is talented writer-director Denis Côté’s (Curling, Vic + Flo ont vu un ours, etc.) fascinating Canadian variation on the idea of the undead.
One gray day in the small town a young man named Simon Dubé dies in a car accident, seemingly in an act of suicide. But what really happened? Shocked and stunned, the townspeople are hesitant to discuss the circumstances of the tragedy as funeral preparations are made. Then things start to get stranger and stranger. For Simon’s parents and his brother, Jimmy, as well as for the deeply concerned town mayor and a handful of others, the aftermath of Simon’s demise makes time itself seem to lose all meaning.
Moreover, something mysterious is happening in the area during the period of mourning. Strangers start to appear in the town and its wintry landscapes. Who are they? Are they ghosts? What is happening? With its Teorema-esque levitations, intimations of George Romero’s walking dead, and gothic snowy images reminiscent of Quebec painter Jean-Paul Lemieux, Ghost Town Anthology is an inventive contribution to the zombie film genre by one of Canada’s most distinctive filmmakers.
Selected for Official Competition at the Berlin International Film Festival in 2019.
- Tom McSorley
Preceded by the short film
Oracle
A child internalizes the chaos of home renovations and his parents' preoccupation, precipitating a fever dream that catapults his consciousness into adult realms of obsession and dread.
Oracle sends us drifting eerily through a terrifying tableau populated by mysterious shadow people straight into Ghost Town Anthology’s land of the undead. Don’t come alone…