Performance artist Amir Asgharnejad made a name for himself with viral videos in which he picked fights with strangers on the streets of Oslo, Norway, and got beat up. Unbeknownst to the millions of people watching the videos, the fights were staged. The strangers Asgharnejad provoked were hired actors. This antics caught the attention of a Los Angeles-based advertising firm, who wanted to build an entire energy drink campaign around Asgharnejad. Committed to see how far he could continue the ruse, Asgharnejad flew out to Los Angeles to take the job.
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House of the Disappeared - A Fantasia International Film Festival 2017 Review
After 25 years in prison, Mi-Hee (Yunjin Kim) is released to serve out the rest of her sentence in her own home, where decades earlier her husband was killed and her son disappeared. She was convicted of killing them both. Though she can’t explain the events of the night that irrevocably altered her life, she maintains her innocence and still seeks to find out what happened to her son. With the help of Priest Choi (Taecyeon), the centuries-old mysteries of the house start to come to light.
Read MoreReplace - A Fantasia International Film Festival 2017 Review
The beautiful Kira (Rebecca Forsythe) isn’t doing so well. What started as a small patch of dead skin is spreading at an alarming rate across her body. She’s also suffering from memory loss. She seeks the help of Dr. Rafaela Crober (Barbara Crampton), who appears concerned but not alarmed. Fearing the loss of her beauty, Kira grows desperate. Lotions and medication aren’t doing anything. But a skin graft from a living donor provide a temporary remedy and Kira spirals out of control as she continues to perform skin the grafts on herself with the aid of some very unwilling donors.
Read MoreAnimals - A Fantasia International Film Festival 2017 Review
With Anna (Birgit Minichmayr) and Nick’s (Philipp Hochmair) marriage on shaking ground following his affair with a neighbor, the couple venture to a cabin in the Swiss Alps. In addition to providing them some much needed time together, the trip is meant to boost their creative endeavors. Anna, a writer, is struggling with a novel and Nick, a chef, is intent on researching the region’s cuisine. But the tone for the getaway is set early on when they hit a sheep on a country road en route to the cabin. A series of increasingly inexplicable occurrences all but guarantee the couple will not be having a peaceful time for which they hoped. Meanwhile Mischa (Mona Petri), the woman they hired to watch their apartment, is being harassed by Harald (Michael Ostrowski), a man convinced she is his deceased ex-girlfriend Andrea, the neighbor with whom Nick had the affair. Like with Anna and Nick, reality appears to be crumbling around Mischa.
Read MoreThe Honor Farm - A Fantasia International Film Festival 2017 Review
After a truly disappointing prom night, Lucy (Olivia Grace Applegate) and her lifelong best friend Annie (Katie Folger) agree to tag along with some classmates and take mushrooms at an abandoned–and possibly haunted–prison work farm in the woods. The ringleader of the group, Laila (Dora Madison) is intent on holding a séance, though her cousin JD (Louis Hunter) may be a little too distracted by the presence of Lucy, who is equally drawn to him. As the drugs kick in, the group wanders through the seemingly empty property, but soon discover they aren’t alone, and even without the drugs, not everything is as it appears to be.
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