A Norwegian zombie comedy took home the top prize at the Fantasia Festival's Frontières Co-Production Market on July 25, beating out 20 titles in the official selection to win the Outpost Award and a package of post-production services.
The film is called Grandmonster. According to Variety, it centers on an American dropout who accidentally triggers a zombie outbreak at a remote Norwegian nursing home while trying to save her grandmother from dementia. Director Vegard Dahle and producer Jon Vatne presented the project on July 22 at a day-long pitching event, arriving in matching sweaters and delivering a pitch described as deadpan and self-deprecating. The audience response was loud and enthusiastic.
The Frontières market drew 300 delegates from 24 countries this year, including producers, buyers, and filmmakers across multiple strands: the official selection, Genre Lab, Shorts to Features, and Music.
Two Outpost Special Awards went to projects in the Shorts to Features category. Reset, from U.S. directors Celine Tien and Jerry Hsu, is a sci-fi drama about a program that resets elderly people into children to keep them economically useful. The short is screening in Fantasia's official international short film competition. Sea Spirits, directed by Edson Jean, is a Haiti-set gothic folk horror about a guilt-ridden mother haunted by her daughter, who is lost at sea and refuses to leave the country in search of her ghost.
The PurpleDOG Award for an official selection project went to Cher, the first project from Thailand to participate in Frontières. The film is a supernatural folk horror about a vengeance-seeking forest spirit that emerges near a remote mining camp built on sacred land. A second PurpleDOG Award, for a project in the Gender Equity in Media Society section of the Genre Film Lab, went to Wifey, a horror thriller from Canadian director Cassidy Civiero about an independent artist about to transition female-to-male who is forced into a non-consensual marriage in which traditional gender norms are used as a violent weapon.
The Sitges International Fantastic Film Festival Award, which includes an invitation to pitch at the Sitges festival in October, went to Eternal Valley, a dark comedy body horror from U.K. director Jasmine De Silva. The feature is based on her proof-of-concept short film Beauty Sleep, which had its world premiere at Fantasia in 2025.
Frontières executive director Annick Mahnert spoke to Variety shortly before the award ceremony. "The feedback we've received from participants about the projects pitched last Wednesday has been overwhelmingly positive," she said. "People have praised not only the exceptional quality of the projects themselves, but also the filmmakers' pitch presentations. Every year, the bar is raised even higher, and I believe that's why decision-makers return year after year."
