By Eric Ortiz
The Fantastic Pavilion presents a weekly recap with the most relevant news about the world of genre cinema.
Festivals
The Cannes Film Festival (May 12-23) confirmed that director Peter Jackson is receiving the honorary Palme d’Or during the opening ceremony on May 12. Jackson himself said that “Cannes has been a meaningful part of my filmmaking journey. In 1988, I attended the Festival Marketplace with my first movie, Bad Taste, then in 2001 we screened a preview sequence from The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, both of which were important milestones in my career.”
Adrián García Bogliano’s horror movie Talking to a Stranger (Hablando con extraños, 2026) is having its Mexican premiere at the 2026 Guadalajara International Film Festival, set to take place from April 17 to 25. Talking to a Stranger is part of the festival’s Genre Cinema competition, alongside Julia Ducournau’s Alpha (2025), Street Wanderers (Los caminantes de la calle, 2025), The Awakening (El despertar, 2025), and Motherwitch (2026).
The Brussels International Fantastic Film Festival (BIFFF) announced its second wave of 2026 titles: the war actioner Sisu: Road to Revenge (2025), the slasher Pinocchio: Unstrung (2026), and the folk tale 100 Nights of Hero (2025). The Belgian festival is happening from April 3 to 18.
News
“Daddy’s gotta go save a mermaid,” says the protagonist Doug (Johnny Pemberton) in the new trailer for Mermaid (2025), the latest flick from director Tyler Cornack. Mermaid debuted last year at SXSW and is heading to U.S. theaters on April 8 (via Utopia).
Synopsis: “A drug addicted Florida man finds a wounded mermaid at his lowest point. When word spreads about his secret, he’ll stop at nothing to protect her.”
Shudder released the official trailer for 1000 Women in Horror (2025), which features Kate Siegel, Kier-La Janisse, Alexandra Heller-Nicholas – who wrote the book of the same name –, and Gigi Saul Guerrero, among others. Donna Davies’ documentary is a “deep dive into how women pioneers revolutionized horror cinema since 1895.” It hits Shudder on March 20.
Paul Giamatti has signed on to star in XYZ Films’ horror picture Boutique. The two-time Oscar nominee will play an American tourist, who “journeys to the eerie English seaside town that inspired the work of his favorite reclusive author but instead gets entangled with a murderous secret society permeating the whole town.”