Fantastic Fest 2026 Preview

So I remember I first started attending my first film festival.

It was the Austin Film Festival.

I had a friend of mine.

His name is Trey.

He had told me, he was like, man, you got to come to Fantastic Fest.

You got to come to Fantastic Fest.

It's the best fest ever.

I finally got in, attended my first year.

I mean, my first movie I saw was Arrival.

It was great.

It was a big old show, and I was hooked.

And the thing that says Fantastic Fest makes it different from most fests is that it's all one location.

So when you're watching movies and you're done, everyone's hanging out at one place.

And because of that, you get to meet a lot more people and you kind of like – it becomes more of a hang.

So you're like watching movies and then you're just kind of hanging out.

And then you're watching movies and you're just hanging out where like South by Southwest or Awesome Film Festival, your time sometimes after a movie is like, oh shit, I got to get to another location.

Let me run in my car.

Let me drive 10 minutes away.

Let me walk.

Let me whatever it is.

And so you're spending less time talking to people about movies.

And the people who go to film festivals are people who love movies to an extreme.

And they're there to watch movies.

And then you have people to talk about who understand – Like when you're watching a movie with a bunch of puppets getting their heads cut off, you're like – normal people are like, what the fuck? And then when you're with these people, like, fuck yeah, and that's the difference.

You just – they love movie because they're movies, and because of that, you seem – you take a – just your spectrum of what you love grows and what you like to watch, and you look for those unique things.