For 35 years now, autumn in Amsterdam, comes to a close with the horror, sci-fi, fantasy, and other genre-rich international cinematic treats of the Imagine Fantastic Film Festival (Oct 31–Nov 9, 2025). The bastion of weird world cinema that advertises “a tentacular touch” was this year housed in two of the city’s Western independent cinemas: Lab111 and the Filmhallen. As always, it places a special spotlight on the filmmakers themselves, many of whom were in attendance.
I braved the wet, chill November climate by bike to take in six features and two collections of shorts – including the audience picks in both categories – at my favorite film festival. (I unfortunately did not get a chance to participate in the festival’s extensive VR program.) Read the round-up of lesser-known J-horror, higher-profile misadventure masterpieces, plus some exceptional animation, and highlights from the shorts program below.
J-Horror Gems
Yûta Shimotsu’s New Group (3.5/5) is a curious visual treat that may not feature flawless pacing or storytelling, but will long linger in your mind after viewing. Asking some of the same questions as current hit TV show Pluribus, New Group looks at the things we will do to fit in, as high-school student Ai and her friends see their classmates devolve into mindless zombies who create elaborate cheerleading formations that absorb anyone who comes into contact with them. This is more of a tale of existential horror than jump scares, and is frequently funny – but it is the gymnastics routines that will burrow into your brain, making this a more memorable film than it might at first appear. (Audience ranking: #38 out of 48 features.)
If you’re looking for inventive twists on more traditional scares, the kind that might tempt you to lock away any dolls in your house, Shinobu Yaguchi’s Dollhouse (3.5/5) is the answer. The Japanese director’s most overtly scary film to date tells the story of a mother who adopts a doll to help her cope with the loss of her 5-year-old daughter, only to find that the doll is not very happy to be replaced and discarded once she is able to have a human daughter again. The film burns slowly to begin, laying the groundwork for a series of increasingly creepy to outright horrific moments as the story reaches its climax. Think Annabelle, but with scares you haven’t seen before that are balanced with actual story. (Audience ranking: #19 of 48.)
Misadventure Masterpieces
Arguably the biggest winner of the festival was The Last Viking from Denmark (4/5). It not only won the Méliès d’argent jury prize for Best European Fantastic Film, but was named the top feature of the festival by the audience as well. (The top jury prize, the Sea Devil Award, went to Maori Gothic revenge story Mārama, the audience’s #9 ranking.) The Last Viking’s Anders Thomas Jensen holds onto his title as one of the festival’s favorite directors with this tale of two brothers – a bank robber recently released from jail, and his neurodivergent brother (played by stand-out Mads Mikkelson) who knows where his loot is stashed – and the childhood trauma they must wade through together to find it. Wild set pieces and unexpected action are grounded in humanistic humor with surprising emotional depth. And, fortunately, this is the one film on this list already readily available to watch on digital in many countries. (Audience ranking: #1 of 48.)
Indie festival darling Fucktoys was another stand-out (4.5/5). American actress Annapurna Sriram (The Blacklist, Billions) stars and makes her directorial debut in this edgy surrealist tale of a young woman from the Florida-like fictional Trashdown who goes on a voyage of strange characters and even stranger circumstances in her quest to raise $1,000 to break a curse. Sriram’s passion project, which also features everybody’s crush François Arnaud (The Borgias, Yellowjackets), won’t be for everyone – if you find the name off-putting, then the jokes may not tickle your funny bone. But it is wholly unique and original, with a story that is as surprising as it is ultimately bittersweetly satisfying in the ways it pulls together all the threads of this Odyssey-like tale in the moderately violent final moments. (Audience ranking: #7 of 48.)
Exceptional Animation
A double-feature of stand-out Chinese-language animation began with Hong Kong’s Another World (3.5/5), from director Tommy Kai Chung Ng, adapting his 2019 14-minute short to a feature length with a much grander storytelling scope and scale. Sure to please Ghibli fans, the sometimes unfathomable tale of a spirit guide in the afterlife who is determined to save a doomed soul from becoming a demon looks at the anger in our human hearts, asking if there is a better way. It’s all brought to life through beautiful 2D art full of intriguing if somewhat underexplained characters. (Audience ranking: #4 of 48.)
From mainland China, The Girl Who Stole Time (4.5/5) is the directorial debut of Yu Ao and Zhou Tienan, two of the three writers behind The Wind Guardians (2018). Stunning 3D animation breathes extra realism into the fantastical, time-twisty tale of an island girl in 1930s China who runs away to the big city and gains the ability to manipulate time, which leads to a sweeping romance that pulls at the threads of the fabric of the universe. It’s a warm-hearted movie that will leave the softer hearted of us with cathartic bittersweet tears. It is my top animated film of the year, but those whose hearts bleed less may not feel the same. (Audience ranking: #28 of 48.)
Surprising Shorts
Imagine FFF also features a very robust shorts program. Highlights include the darker-than-you-expect black & white fantasy short Em & Selma Go Griffin Hunting (4/5, audience ranking: #4 out of 28 shorts), which features a culture of toxic masculinity enacted by female characters. Soft sci-fi quasi-heartbreaker The Second Time Around (4/5, audience ranking: #2 of 28), about a woman who turns up at a café looking for her umbrella and finds much more, is also a charmer – and, along with Em & Selma, a somewhat surprising exclusion from the Oscar shortlists.
Add to that the empowering joy of Check Please (3.5/5, audience: #6 of 28), where a recent Korean immigrant and a Korean-American colleague literally fight, in comic martial-arts style, over who gets to pay the check – not to mention the super-short, semi-surreal Pimple (3.5/5, #8 or 28), where a boy’s acne helps him fight his bullies.
The winner of the jury prize for Best European Short Film might have been a stop-motion animated short featuring a meeting between two fantasy creatures called Radix(audience ranking: #18 of 28) – but the big winner is arguably really The Pearl Comb (4/5). This mermaid folk-horror short flick with great VFX and even more fantastic production design not only won the #1 spot in the audience ranking, it’s also now been shortlisted for the Oscars.
Thank you to the Imagine Fantastic Film Festival for the press pass.
