The wings fell off the horse. I judged 14 movies, and then the wings fell off the horse.
It was my last night in Montreal at the Fantasia International Film Festival, when I skipped all the way from the awards ceremony to McKibbin’s Irish Pub, the annual genre event’s unofficial headquarters for hanging out between movies. I was exhausted from the week, but thrilled by the technical difficulty I’d just seen befall the iconic Cheval Noir statuette, live and on stage.
Planting myself in front of some friends on the sidewalk, I smiled and sang, “The wings fell off the horse! The wings fell off the horse! Oh, my God, I swear to God, the wings fell off the horse!”
Related Stories
Technically speaking, my musical reporting was a fib. Just one wing fell off the “horse” (more of a pegasus, really) in the middle of the “Mother of Flies” acceptance speech at the 29th edition of the film festival in Quebec, Canada. I was finishing the last of my jury duties, when the Adams family became the first American filmmakers to win the Cheval Noir for Best Film. It’s the main competition’s top prize, and they found out faster than most that the wings on their fancy new trophy are meant to come off.
“It felt almost supernatural, honestly. No one was touching that part of it,” said Mitch Davis, Fantasia’s artistic director and director of international programming. “For a moment my heart sank, but then everyone laughed and there was a real sweetness to it.” Always busy but inscrutably warm, Davis told me that the Cheval Noir was designed to be taken apart for easy shipping and world travel. The enigmatic programmer has been with Fantasia since 1997 and says he’s seen this exact snafu with the wings play out on the red carpet before. That’s the kind of privileged lore that comes with jury duty.
Like most industries, entertainment is about networking. Figuring out critical consensus requires polling your community, and with more films being made and submitted to festivals than ever before, who judges these competition matters. That’s especially true when it comes to the deluge of new genre movies entering the space each year — a reality Davis called both “wonderful” and “horrifying.”
“We typically want to have a mix of film critics, filmmakers, distributors, and sales agents, so they can all be in dialogue together and approach the conversation as a collective,” he explained. “At Fantasia, we need people who both understand what excellent genre movies are, and who appreciate the level of influence they can have over an emerging filmmaker’s career.”
This year’s wing debacle was the first time the statue ever had a problem during the ceremony, but if you ask Davis and his fellow Fantasia organizers, they’d tell you something even more magical happened that night. “I actually cheered out-loud when I got the jury results,” he said. “The Adams are like family.”
“Truly, I don’t think the jurors were aware of what a presence the Adams have been at this festival,” said Ted Geoghegan, director of international communications. “There’s a like-mindedness and a kinship there that really speaks to why we all love these types of movies and these types of people. We’re bringing the right group together.”
Genre movies are highly stylized works of cinema with recognizable tropes and universal emotions. Think fantasy, sci-fi, romance, action, and more. Filmed on a microbudget, “Mother of Flies” is a lo-fi horror effort — about a sick woman and her father seeking alternative healing from a witch — that was inspired by the Adams’ real battle with cancer. It was shot around their remote home in the Catskills, but 21-year-old Zelda Adams, dad John Adams, and mom Toby Poser have been coming to Montreal for years.
“Every time we finish a film, we think to ourselves, ‘Is this one good enough to get into Fantasia?’ And luckily this one was,” Zelda said at the start of the “Mother of the Flies” acceptance speech. The filmmaker was holding the Cheval Noir and sharing how proud she was of her parents when the wing fell off.
The Adams’ long history with the festival didn’t come up for the jury. Truthfully, I didn’t even know about it. In hindsight, that was critical for our impartiality, but something brought our opinions together.
“I don’t know if you feel this way, but I think we ultimately gravitated towards the more personal and idiosyncratic films,” said writer Payton McCarty-Simas. An author and critic, who also programs for several U.S. genre festivals, she flew up from New York to be on the Cheval Noir jury — before lecturing on her book, “That Very Witch: Fear, Feminism, and the American Witch Film.” The academic offered her mystical expertise throughout deliberations, and at the ceremony, McCarty-Simas agreed that the wing falling off felt “spooky but fitting.”
“There were a couple of big standout films that were very showy and more overtly big budget,” she said. “But as the film we highlighted the most, ‘Mother of Flies’ speaks to an ethos that draws out how important it is to stay grounded in personal storytelling.” The 2025 Cheval Noir winner for Best Film also took home Best Score. (In their spare time, the filmmaking Adams family is also known as the band H6LLB6ND6R.)
Even missing a wing, they’re doing jury selection right in Montreal. Pascal Plante won the Cheval Noir for Best Film in 2023 for “Red Rooms,” a disturbing crime thriller that’s appropriately about a jury trial. The French-Canadian filmmaker returned to Fantasia as the Cheval Noir jury president this summer, leading the discussion between me, McCarty-Simas, “Therapy Dogs” director Ethan Eng, and George Schmalz, the vice president of theatrical distribution and new business development at Kino Lorber.
Plante took constant notes while we spoke but he seemed to miss the award-worthy crush everyone had on him at the breakfast table. “Pascal is truly one of Canada’s greatest directors,” said Davis. “He’s such an unbelievably great filmmaker, on par with David Fincher, easily. We just knew he would be a brilliant juror.”
“I grew up in Quebec City, but it was like my cinema life started in Montreal,” said Plante. The filmmaker attended Concordia University, where Fantasia has taken place every year since he was a film student. “There are several festivals in Montreal, but this is the cool one. I’m 36 now, and I arrived at 19. So, this is my 17th Fantasia but my first getting jury duty. I thought it went well!”
Plante keeps his Cheval Noir for “Red Rooms” in a special spot in his apartment. He lives with his girlfriend Dominique Dussault, who produced the 2023 Cheval Noir winner and the couple’s earlier “Fake Tattoos” and “Nadia, Butterfly.” For Plante, the winged Best Film statue symbolizes the community support that is necessary for new indie films to thrive. Not only did the accolade validate the work of “unsung heroes” like Dussault, but it also flagged Plante’s “brainier” approach to horror as a worthwhile endeavor for the industry.
“It made sense to have ‘Red Rooms’ at Fantasia,” said Plante. “We don’t make films for awards at all. That’s not really what I am about. But those accolades in an industry where there are so many films, they do make a difference. If a film plays Fantasia, I believe it must be a generous film. They asked us to open the festival with it, and that’s such a big honor. Then, the award gave us a big industry push because we had that stamp of approval.”
Plante has played international festivals as big as Cannes, but the Fantasia audience is famously fun. (Seriously, they literally meow with excitement before every film.) Chasing down the witchy McCarty-Simas after the awards ceremony to buy a copy of her book, Plante embodies that spirit.
So does Chris Nash, the Canadian writer and director of Shudder’s “In a Violent Nature.” Coming off his debut feature, Nash served as jury president for Fantasia’s 2025 New Flesh competition, dedicated to first-time directors. “I basically only measure films in terms of sincerity,” he said. “If it feels sincere and it feels like somebody’s really trying to express something that’s not altogether comfortable to say in a crowd, then I weigh that very heavily. Within genre film, it’s really easy to insulate yourself — in special effects, extreme situations, anything that might be a bit abrasive to an audience — and convince yourself that it’s a brave thing to do. But the bravest thing to do is just be sincere.”
Reflecting on his first-ever experience as a film festival juror, Nash joked, “The entertainment industry in general would be better if I was the dictator of who succeeded and who didn’t.” But asked to speak about his category’s winner — Alexander Ullom’s “It Ends” — Nash spoke from the heart.
“It’s a hard thing to be able to arrive at whether or not somebody is being sincere and telling you the truth,” he said. “But everything about it just felt like it resonated, specifically with being a young adult and not knowing where you’re going with your life or what your life is going to amount to. Should you just buy into the crowd and do the traditional thing, or should you keep fighting for something more? That definitely resonated with me, and the realization that that never ends. That’s not something that just sticks with you in your twenties. It’ll keep going through your thirties and forties, and then you’ll move out into the woods.”
In the early 20th century, artists in Quebec faced significant censorship because of the Catholic church. The Cheval Noir represents the political fight that pushed Montreal to become one of Canada’s most progressive cities — an ideology that’s been at the core of the festival since its inception.
An hour before the wing(s) fell off the horse, Fantasia announced the winners for its regional shorts competition, Les Fantastiques Week-Ends Du Cinéma Québécois, at a different ceremony — but several of the main categories presented alongside the Cheval Noir are specific to Canada.
Carolyn Mauricette, the director of Canadian programming, selected the jury for the Northern Excellence Award for Filmmaking using the vast network of cinephiles she’s met since being a kid in Toronto. (Pour one out for her favorite movie rental store, Suspect Video, which was beloved by the city even when it closed.) “I like people who are immersed, who love film as much as I do,” the programmer said. “But I also like to make sure that they’re well-rounded. So, they don’t just know horror, but they’re aficionados who watch other things and cover other things as well. That’s essential if you want to consider genre film — any art, really — with the appropriate context.”
Mauricette chooses people the same way she chooses films, by balancing the political realities of her country with the inclusive values of Fantasia. This year, her jury president was filmmaker Elza Kephart (“Slaxx”) and the top award went to Chloé Cinq-Mars, for “Peau À Peau” — or “Nesting.” “Elza is such a wonderfully well-rounded person, and she consults, so she was just perfect for the section,” said Mauricette. “We also want someone who’s bilingual, and Elza lives in Montreal. We have to showcase voices across Canada. We had another juror who came in from Winnipeg, which is more out west. We need that diversity, honestly, now more than ever.”
No matter where you come from, Fantasia appreciates folks who can wear multiple hats. Like every festival, they have a limited budget. But Davis routinely checked on me to make sure I wasn’t feeling burnt out doing double-duty as a judge and reporter, and when I told the rest of the Cheval Noir jury that I would be writing about our experience, they seemed as interested in my work as I was in theirs. And of course, we all loved the Adams family.
“When you’re with a Fantasia crowd, you’re thinking with your heart, aren’t you?,” Plante said. “That’s not possible watching something on your own, but you feel it talking with other jury members. I was aware of the Adams sort of, but ‘Mother of Flies’ was my first experience with them. The gesture is so authentic, and you hear that word ‘indie’ get tossed around a lot, but they are a big discovery. If there are things to nitpick, their film rejects the idea of the nitpicking. Now, I want to see everything from them.”
In the weeks leading up to Fantasia, I watched “Mother of Flies” and 13 more films — regrettably, all on my laptop. I also answered a handful of e-mails from our lovely jury coordinator, Rita Faid, and started researching the Cheval Noir. A bone-deep fan of mythology, Davis said the symbol was chosen because it could be understood anywhere.
“At its best, genre is about social consciousness and speaking truth to power.” he said. “It has represented marginalized and oppressed voices forever, and that image felt spiritually appropriate. We knew it would resonate every without context if need be.”
Waiting for my flight from Los Angeles to take off, I texted a friend, “I’M GONNA TOUCH THAT HORSE.” It’s been a difficult summer in the U.S. and the promise of meeting a bunch of new friends in Canada has kept me going for months. When I landed in Montreal, I was met by Fantasia’s hospitality team. Loading into a van with other reporters, a few filmmakers, and at least one distributor, I took the passenger seat and asked where everyone was from.
“New York,” said a voice I should’ve recognized as America’s soon-to-be pioneering Best Film winner. Zelda Adams sat diagonally behind me on our drive, and I didn’t realize I’d already seen her on screen at first. Later, when I asked which film she made, she said “Mother of Flies.”
Stunned but doing my best poker face, I couldn’t believe our flights got there at the same time. Pretending I didn’t already love Zelda’s movie, I was inexplicably grateful the wings on her airplane couldn’t fall off.
