Fantastic Futures is SLASH’s showcase that celebrates the brightest up-and-coming talents and aims to highlight the works of student and first-time filmmakers who we believe have a bright future in genre cinema ahead of them. The winner of this competition will be chosen by a jury.
Winner 2024:
Lovebugs (Teddy Alvarez-Nissen)
The following films were nominated for the Fantastic Futures Award:
Crow Man (Yohann Abdelnour)
The Crossing Over Express (Luke Barnett, Tanner Thomason)
Didn’t Think I’d See You Here (Dylan Guerra)
Beach Logs Kill (Haley Z. Boston)
Lovebugs (Teddy Alvarez-Nissen)
Ruthless Blade (Bo Zhang)
Hadis (Nazrin Aghamaliyeva)
To Be a Seed (Julia Granillo Tostado)
Thread Tension (Ruby Mastrodimos)
Siesta (Gustavo René Sanabria)
The Old Hag and the Crow (María Lucía Bayardo)
Weeds (Pola Kazak)
Jury
Shengwei Zhou
is an animator and filmmaker. He focuses on exploring individuals’ dreams and unconsciousness with an emphasis on materials and textures in our daily life. His representative works include SHe, Art Is Dead, Let’s Fall In Love, and the Perfect City series. His work has been selected by film festivals and art exhibitions nationally and internationally, including SLASH Film Festival, Lund Fantastic Film Festival, Fantasia Festival, Bucheon International Fantastic Film Festival, Fantastic Fest, Brussels International Fantastic Film Festival, Grossmann Fantastic Film & Wine Festival, etc.
Following Joséphine Darcy Hopkins, our inaugural Fantastic Futures honoree in 2021, and 2022 laureate Tal Kantor, Shengwei Zhou was the 2023 Fantastic Futures winner at SLASH Film Festival.