The concept emerged from the french term Cinéma Fantastique and includes genre films that challenge the boundaries of reality with a little the help from our friend imagination.

Film as an artform has been imagination’s sidekick ever since 1896.
The ability to copy reality was magical enough to start with but it wasn’t long before filmmakers began to experiment with the medium on a technical level and stretch the boundaries of what could be put on the silver screen.

With the help of filmmaking we leaped closer to the most realistic recreation of our world, but it also brought us far closer to the unreal and fantastic. One of the most groundbreaking film magicians was of course, the frenchman and film pioneer Georges Méliès. It isn’t a coincidence that he has given name to to the award we, and other ffestivals with us, hand out to the best fantastic films.

Ever since the beginning of cinema, it’s been mainly in genre films such as horror, fantasy and sci fi that the limits of what is possible in the celluloid world were stretched, pushed and broken. Fantastic films can thus be great art works such as Stanley Kubrick’s 2001 – A Space Odyssey and Fritz Lang’s classic Metropolis, or commercial bestsellers like the Harry Potter movies. Many times they are even both!