Cyberpunk mixes it up with Muay Thai action: Paween Purijitpanya's new action-fantasy 'God Skin,' has its world premiere at Fantasia. (M Studio)We visit film festivals to marvel at excellent cinema. We also go to catch a glimpse of what filmmaking and media production might look like in the future. At Montréal’s Fantasia International Film Festival, which closes on Aug. 2, audiences are witnessing exactly this: exceptional films alongside a rich and dizzying media ecology of emerging practices.From the physical artistry of Thailand’s Panna Rittikrai’s Stunt Team to a new documentary tracing the origins of the legendary Japanese superhero franchise, Ultraman, this year’s festival lineup showcase one of the festival’s founding mantras: to create bridges between the cutting-edge and the mainstream. Today’s scrappy outsider can reshape tomorrow’s industry. As Fantasia marks its 30th year as a haven for international genre cinema, it’s worth reflecting on the shift in media that made such a festival possible. For much of the 20th century, international film festivals offered a strict diet of highbrow arthouse cinema, deeming horror, action and fantasy unworthy of such platforms. What was once considered highbrow was decided by a filmmaker’s devotion to serve the medium over and above the market. Film festivals emerged partly to endow artistic films with prestige beyond box-office performance. Cannes, for instance, prides itself on operating “in the service of the cinematographic art.” In contrast, genre films were largely unwelcome in such settings, dismissed as standardized commodities built for commercial markets.Creative or cultural industries today play a much bigger economic role than they used to for much of the 20th century. In this new media landscape, the rigid divides between pure cinema and genre cinema collapsed. Show business no longer creates value solely by selling a single commodity. Instead, it thrives on building interconnected “media ecologies,” creatively connecting film production with TV, toys, games, tourism, platforms, brands, live events, local practices and new technologies. From the beginning, Fantasia’s programmers grasped that the Marvels and Disneys cannot dominate the creative industries forever. In the scrappier outskirts of global media centres, genre productions must often forge eccentric new connections to survive: with new talents and local cultural practices.Fantasia welcomes the eccentricFantasia started with cinephiles from Montréal creating an institution to present quirky genre cinema. Fantasia celebrates cinema as the great “impure” art, as the philosopher Jacques Rancière might call it. According to longtime programmer Mitch Davis, Fantasia welcomes the “eccentric and the unclassifiable.”The “Asia” in Fantasia’s name is a reminder of its origin as the first of its kind, North American showcase for Asian genre cinema. Its success as a global platform for fantastic film shows that creative ferments initially located in Asia did not remain confined there. Institutions like Tsuburaya Productions and the Panna Stunt Team now belong to our shared global media heritage. A still from Shin Ultraman (2022). (Tsuburaya Productions) Fantasia helps unique production cultures make their case to global audiences. Films at Fantasia may become windows into the creative linkages going into genre productions around the world.Ultraman: 60 years of design and world buildingThis year’s festival celebrates 60 years of Ultraman, the classic Japanese superhero who debuted on Japanese television in 1966. The documentary, The Origin of Ultraman, explores the Japanese special-effects (tokusatsu) studio behind the character. Planned by Hirokazu Kore-eda, directed by Yu Nakamura and Kazuki Yoshida, it tells the story of Tsuburaya Productions creating a TV superhero who fights freakish alien monsters to defend earth. Tsuburaya Production’s explosive franchise became part of a larger Japanese success story. Japan’s creative industries would soon attract the most ubiquitous global fan culture. It became a template for boosting soft power and growth that many countries would emulate. A still from 2024’s Ultraman Rising. (Netflix) The documentary illustrates the beginnings of this industry-wide paradigm shift. Ultraman was, first and foremost, a collaboration between Eiji Tsuburaya and Tohl Narita. Tsuburaya was a special-effects technician. Narita, a designer. Narita was a new kind of talent in show business. His work could travel beyond screens. A monster designed for an episode became the basis of the narrative, a costume, toys, collectables and raw material for another episode or future films.Post-Second World War Japanese monsters and special effects looked the way they did for a reason. Japanese creators created spectacular cinema in a bare-bones industry, turning hurdles into fertile ground. Ultraman democratized franchise-building by rethinking the role of design.Preserving physical stuntsThe late Rittikrai assembled martial-arts performers in Thailand in the late 1970s to create low-budget action films. It was remarkably viable. Later, Rittikrai’s Stunt Team achieved global prominence with Ong-Bak (2003). Today, Thai film director Paween Purijitpanya proves that traditional, physical stunt work can reinvigorate futuristic genres. His action-fantasy, God Skin, which has its world premiere at Fantasia, mixes cyberpunk with Muay Thai action.The film’s standout element may be the involvement of Panna’s Stunt Team: an institution whose work with stunt actors stands out in a media environment that increasingly turns to digital effects. The teaser for ‘God Skin’ What Hollywood and Silicon Valley missesWhether through a 60-year-old monster or modern cyberpunk martial arts, Fantasia reminds us how creative industries grow.Productions tackling industrial disadvantages by forging new links can revolutionize media. Montréal’s Fantasia looks for what Hollywood and Silicon Valley misses.Deepro Roy does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.