The winners of Neuchâtel International Fantastic Film Festival 2024

And the Melies d’argent winners of the ​Neuchâtel International Fantastic Film Festival are…

The winner of the Méliès d’Argent Award for Best Fantastic Genre Feature Film at the Neuchâtel International Fantastic Film Festival is “Handling the Undead” by Thea Hvistendahl (Finland, Germany 2023).

On a hot summer day in Oslo, the dead mysteriously awaken, and three families are thrown into chaos when their deceased loved ones come back to them. Who are they, and what do they want? A family is faced with the mother’s reawakening before they have even mourned her death after a car accident; an elderly woman gets the love of her life back the same day she has buried her; a grandfather rescues his grandchild from the grave site in a desperate attempt to get his daughter out of her depression.

The winner of the Méliès d’Argent Award for Best European Fantastic Genre Short Film at the NIFFF is “The Watchman” by Thea Hvistendahl (NO/SE/GR, 2024).

Sergeant Bulut spends his nights in a watchtower waiting for an enemy that doesn’t arrive, until suddenly strange lights appear on the horizon. Ali Cherri creates a universe in which a suspended and void time opens the door to ghostly presences from a past made of war. Shot with an extreme and detailed precision of vision and sound, The Watchman is an urgent film that deconstructs the myth of duty, laying bare the absurdity of the omnipresent war rhetoric.