Nicky Murphy's vampire mockumentary "I Love Paris" claimed the audience award for best international feature at the 2026 Fantasia International Film Festival, which ran from July 16 through August 2. The film's blend of horror and comedy resonated with the genre-forward crowd that attends the Montreal-based festival, one of the world's premier destinations for fantastical, cult, and boundary-pushing cinema.
Masanao Kawajiri's animated feature "Cherry and Virgin" took home the best animated feature audience award, continuing Fantasia's tradition of championing inventive work across multiple mediums. The festival remains a launching pad for international genre films seeking North American distribution and cultural cachet.
Fantasia's audience awards carry particular weight in the festival circuit. Unlike critic-selected prizes, these honors reflect what actual viewers gravitated toward during the three-week run, making them barometers for grassroots enthusiasm and word-of-mouth potential. A mockumentary format centered on vampires suggests Murphy's film leans into satirical deconstruction of both the vampire genre and Parisian mythology, likely playing to the festival's appetite for smart horror-comedy hybrids.
The festival's animation honoree suggests Kawajiri's film delivered originality within the animated space. Animation has become increasingly central to Fantasia's programming, with the festival giving anime, experimental animation, and feature-length animated work significant platform and respect.
These wins matter for the films' trajectories. A Fantasia audience award provides credibility with distributors and international buyers, particularly for independent and international titles seeking theatrical or streaming homes. For Murphy and Kawajiri, the recognition signals that their work transcends niche appeal and connects with broad festival audiences who actively seek out provocative, unconventional storytelling.
Fantasia continues operating as a kingmaker for genre