If you're a superfan of Cinéfest Sudbury International Film Festival and can't wait for the Sept. 15-23 festival to officially start, you're in luck.
Cinéfest Sudbury has teamed up with Cineplex Events to present a screening of the film “Mandy” as a festival warm-up at 7 p.m. Sept. 14.
Starring Nicolas Cage, “Mandy" is set in the primal wilderness of 1983 where Red Miller (Cage), a broken and haunted lumberjack, lives in the woods with his artist girlfriend Mandy (Andrea Riseborough) who spends her days reading fantasy paperbacks.
One day, she catches the eye of a crazed cult leader who conjures a group of motorcycle-riding demons to kidnap her.
Red, armed with a chainsaw and various other weapons, stops at nothing to get her back, leaving a bloody, brutal pile of bodies in his wake.
“Mandy” filmmaker Panos Cosmatos, who directed the piece and co-wrote it with Aaron Stewart-Ahn, said working with Cage, who's known for his action movie roles, was fantastic.
He said he's admired Cage's acting for many years.
“He felt like a creative partner,” he said. “He was open to my ideas. We had long discussions about how to build and modulate this character over the course of the film. That was very gratifying and worked well.”
Described on Wikipedia as an action horror film, “Mandy” crosses many genres, said Cosmatos, including revenge movie, fantasy, rock opera and even lowbrow comedy.
The son of Greco-Italian filmmaker George Cosmatos, Cosmatos was born in Italy but spent his formative years in Victoria, B.C. watching an eclectic collection of films.
He wasn't, however, allowed to watch horror films until he turned 13. Cosmatos would instead look at the covers of VHS copies of films in this genre and imagine what these movies were about without having seen them.
“I'm trying to bring that sense of chaotic imagination where everything is possible, the way I would imagine these films from the backs (of VHS boxes),” he said.
“It was often way more outlandish and unpredictable than these movies actually were.”
The film, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival this past winter, has received some good reviews.
“I've been overwhelmed with surprise,” Cosmatos said, adding he expected a similar reaction to his first film, 2010's “Beyond the Black Rainbow,” where people were split between loving it and not getting it.
“I've been happy that people have responded so positively to it. I didn't expect that.”
If you're interested in catching the Sept. 14 Cinéfest screening of “Mandy,” visit cinefest.com for tickets.
