Genre cinema has always been approached by great directors as an opportunity to prove their creative genius: Méliès, Cocteau, Franju, Kubrick, Raimi, Jackson, Cameron, De Palma, Polanski, Tarantino, to name just a few of the most famous ones. Popular, unifying and evocative, uninhibited or demanding, suggestive or forward-looking, jubilant, avant-garde, exhilarating, immersive and protesting ... Fantastic cinema deeply involves its spectator and tries to make him travel to unforgettable and imaginary wonderlands.

Today, however, we face a strange paradox. Even though on the one hand the global box office is mainly dominated by fantastic productions, and the major international festivals (Cannes, Berlin, Toronto, Locarno, Venice ...) are increasingly highlighting genre films, on the other hand the more specialised events, which exist and develop in other countries (Fantasia in Montreal, Sitges festival in Spain, the BIFFF in Belgium, the NIFFF in Switzerland, the PIFAN in Korea, the FrightFest in London ...), have not yet found a real, artistic and unifying momentum in France.

The Paris Ciné Fantastique association has created an ambitious festival, able to meet the expectations of the public, the filmmakers and the press: the Paris International Fantastic Film Festival.

Featuring an international selection of feature films and short films, the Paris International Fantastic Film Festival highlights the future talents of genre cinema, and offers the latest works from the best film makers in the business.

The programme offers all you can get from genre cinema: science fiction, horror, fantasy, thriller ... The « genre » is fully represented, for the sake of eclecticism and openness, discovery and sharing.

Paris Ciné Fantastique is an organisation which aims to “promote fantastic cinema and its culture through the production and organisation of various events (screenings, shows, festivals, cultural happenings), editing and production of cultural works and editing a website.”

The organising team is composed of 20 volunteers. An extra 20 people, also volunteers, join the group during the festival.

The festival’s mission is to highlight genre cinema in all its aspects and for all audiences: films may often by atypical, by their content, by their production, by the aesthetics they represent, even by their story. Surprising and daring art pieces, often rare ones, that the PIFFF tries to put - or bring back - in the limelight.

Willing to address an ever wider audience but also to promote current films which may be in the margins of current production, the festival is committed to show film premieres in Paris, most of them screened for the first time in France.

The aim is to create an appealing event to draw the broader public and make people gain interest in the whole programme, to make them more interested in works that they would not have considered watching at first sight.

PIFFF offers several different categories:

INTERNATIONAL FEATURE FILM COMPETITION

At the PIFFF, the public decides who gets the award for the International Feature Film Competition, aka the Golden Eye. Spectators vote at the end of each screening of a film in competition. The film that receives the highest average is declared the winner. The announcement is made at the beginning of the closing ceremony.

OUT OF COMPETITION SCREENINGS

In addition to the competition, the best of fantastic cinema worldwide is offered to our festival goers through a rich panorama of art pieces.

CULT & RETRO SCREENINGS

The festival’s aim is also to make people (re)discover a whole section of forgotten or despised cinema: films with real qualities which sometimes had difficulties to find their place within the networks of distribution and / or have had to face a severe critical welcome.
Since the beginning of the festival, a dozen films have been restored to be screened for the first time in France during our festival.

THE MIDNIGHT FORBIDDEN SCREENING

Always in the perspective of creating a popular event, the festival includes a night session during the weekend with a more radical - but also festive - screening.

THE SCHOOL SCREENINGS

We also organise during the festival several sessions intended for schools. These sessions are very popular with teachers and pupils. Approaching young audiences is considered a necessity to us. To offer a different cinema which develops imagination, at a time when the tendency is in the cultural formatting, seems essential and perfectly coherent with the festival’s purpose.

THE FRENCH AND INTERNATIONAL SHORT FILM COMPETITION

The PIFFF's wish is to celebrate fantastic cinema, both through feature films and avant-garde films with two short film competitions. They present the best of French and worldwide production, and are recognised as such worldwide.
For the French competition, we invite each year a selection of professionals to compose the jury. For the international competition, it is, as for the feature films’ competition, the public who decides.

Since 2016, the PIFFF venue has been the Max Linder Panorama cinema, one of the last remaining movie theaters of the Grands Boulevards in Paris and the last one equipped with a panoramic mono-screen. With a bar, a three levels screening theater (orchestra, mezzanine and balcony for a total of 616 seats). The venue mixes the past (the volumes of the hall and screening evocative of the 1930s) and the future, the Max Linder Panorama was one of the first authorized THX cinemas in Paris. As a member of the CIP organisation (Paris Independent Cinemas), this independent Parisian cinema’s programme focuses on quality film selections and guarantees cinematographic diversity.