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Québécois filmmaker Ariana Louis-Seize’s French-language rom-com, Humanist Vampire Seeking Consenting Suicidal Person, bears a lot in common with offbeat vampire features like What We Do in the Shadows and A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night. The absurdly long title, of course, is one of the more obvious commonalities, but it’s also in the quirky lead protagonist with a staunch moral center and a bewitching sense of humor.

While that means that Louis-Seize’s feature debut isn’t forging new ground, it makes up for that with an overabundance of wholesome charm.

We meet Sasha (Lilas-Rose Cantin) as a young vampire on her birthday, where her doting father (Steve Laplante) and more prudent mother (Sophie Cadieux) worry about their daughter’s empathy problem during a clown’s performance. Most parents would be proud to have such a sensitive child who’s deeply concerned with the wellbeing of others,...

"Your daughter's compassion is triggered when she sees humans dying." Drafthouse FIlms has debuted an official US trailer for an acclaimed dark comedy vampire horror film titled Humanist Vampire Seeking Consenting Suicidal Person hailing from Quebec. This one originally premiered at the 2023 Venice & Toronto Film Festivals last year, and has been playing at more festivals this year. Sasha is a young vampire with a serious problem: she's too sensitive to kill! When her exasperated parents cut off her blood supply (literally), Sasha's life is in jeopardy. Luckily, she meets Paul, a lonely teen willing to give his life to save hers. Their friendly agreement soon becomes a nocturnal quest to fulfill Paul's last wishes before day breaks. Starring Sara Montpetit as Sasha, with Félix-Antoine Bénard as Paul, Steve Laplante, Sophie Cadieux, and Noémie O'Farrell. I raved in my Venice review: "What a great, bloody vampire gem, easy to watch and fall for,...

With the 2024 Overlook Film Festival now officially in the rearview mirror, the annual New Orleans celebration of all things horror has announced the winners of its audience and jury awards.

The festival’s top prize, the Audience Award for Feature Film, went to “Oddity,” Damian Mc Carthy’s home invasion horror flick that was a breakout from the SXSW 2024 midnight lineup.

“’Oddity’ delivers a brilliant, bespoke, and tightly entertaining string of ideas that work stronger as a collection — with even these missteps feeling like they branch from a unified center,” IndieWire’s Alison Foreman wrote in her Overlook review of the film. “Similar to Mc Carthy’s earlier ‘Caveat,’ this 98-minute treat demands to be reassessed a second time. Thank the wooden boy it’s coming to streaming: a triumphant addition to the director’s growing filmography and a standout in Shudder’s carousel of kick-ass ghost stories.”

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"It's an acquires taste. You'll end up enjoying it." Madman Films in Australia has revealed their trailer for an acclaimed dark comedy vampire film from Quebec titled Humanist Vampire Seeking Consenting Suicidal Person. This is a very good film! It premiered at the 2023 Venice and Toronto Film Festivals last year, and is still playing at fests this year including Wisconsin, Cleveland, and Miami coming up. Sasha is a young vampire with a serious problem: she's too sensitive to kill! When her exasperated parents cut off her blood supply (literally), Sasha's life is in jeopardy. Luckily, she meets Paul, a lonely teen willing to give his life to save hers. But their friendly agreement soon becomes a nocturnal quest to fulfill Paul's last wishes before day breaks. Starring Sara Montpetit as Sasha, with Félix-Antoine Bénard as the boy Paul, Steve Laplante, Sophie Cadieux, and Noémie O'Farrell. I raved in my Venice review: "What a great,...

Stars: Sara Montpetit, Félix-Antoine Bénard, Steve Laplante, Sophie Cadieux, Noémie O’Farrell, Marie Brassard, Patrick Hivon, Marc Beaupré | Written by Ariane Louis-Seize, Christine Doyon | Directed by Ariane Louis-Seize

The feature debut of director / co-writer Ariane Louis-Seize, this splendidly titled French-Canadian vampire flick is a blackly comic coming-of-ager that’s basically a cult movie waiting to happen. With a genre-savvy script, a terrific cast and buckets of charm, it’s a fang-tastic treat that deserves to find a devoted audience.

Set in Montreal, Humanist Vampire Seeking Consenting Suicidal Person stars Sara Montpetit as Sasha, a 62-year-old vampire who still has the body of a teenager. As a young girl (played by Lilas-Rose Cantin) in the 1980s, Sasha was left appalled at her birthday party when she suddenly realised that she was supposed to kill the clown her parents (Steve Laplante and Sophie Cadieux) had ordered for her, and she refused.

Years later,...

The unkillable vampire legend gets one of its frequent cinematic resurrections with Québécois director Ariane Louis-Seize’s sweetly gothy Venice Days winner, a film wittily — if too comprehensively — described by its title: “Humanist Vampire Seeking Consenting Suicidal Person.” The idea of a vampire who doesn’t want to kill is hardly without precedent. But Louis-Seize’s eager debut, intentionally or otherwise, plays to a relatively vamp-starved demographic, providing continuity to kids who have long outgrown the “Sesame Street” version, but are still a bit young for the emo lustiness of the “Twilight” franchise. It’s more fairy tale than scary tale.

It is, however, a fine showcase for the witchy charisma of star Sara Montpetit who, after playing the doom-fixated object of a first crush in Charlotte Le Bon’s terrific “Falcon Lake,” seems hellbent on cornering the market in gloomy Francophone teenagers navigating an entree into adulthood in which sex and death are intertwined.

It’s such a wonderfully simple yet utterly unique premise. Ever since Sasha (Sara Montpetit) was a young vampire, she’s been unable to bare her fangs. Maybe it’s the product of Ptsd (after a hilarious “clown incident”). Or maybe it’s a result of her body chemistry triggering her compassion center at the sight of human duress rather than hunger like the rest of her species. Thus sustenance comes only from the blood bags others provide her.

Dad (Steve Laplante) is sympathetic. Mom (Sophie Cadieux) is frustrated. He wants to give their daughter time to grow into her own skin. She wants to stop having to be the only one who hunts out of the three of them. So after a few decades pass and Sasha’s more heartless aunt (Marie Brassard) bends their ears towards tough love, the time to kick her out of the nest arrives.

Vampirism has many metaphorical possibilities. In the quirky Quebecois vamp-com “Vampire Humaniste Chereche Suicidaire Consentant” (“Humanist Vampire Seeking Consenting Suicidal Person”), the bloodsucking undead — more specifically, their eating habits — stand in for troubled teens, developmental delays, sexual coming-of-age, and even vegetarianism. The film opens with a darkly comedic scene of a family presenting a little girl with her birthday present: A party clown, which the girl’s parents have locked inside of a wooden trunk in the living room. Go ahead, they tell her. Eat him. You’re old enough now.

But Sasha (Sarah Montpetit) doesn’t want to kill the clown — which is a problem because, as a vampire, someday she’s going to have to learn how to murder humans for sustenance. Mom (Sophie Caideux) and Dad (Steve Laplante) take Sasha to a vampire pediatrician, who tells them that Sasha has a neurological defect that makes her feel...

Only two projects into her already solid filmography, Maria Chapdelaine and Falcon Lake star Sara Montpetit will sink her teeth into Ariane Louis-Seize‘s Vampire humaniste cherche suicidaire consentant. A filmmaker who has preemed her shorts at TIFF and Berlinale, Louis-Seize’s feature debut has Félix-Antoine Bénard in the co-lead and the rest of the players include Viking‘s Steve Laplante, Sophie Cadieux, Noémie O’Farrell, Marie Brassard, Marc Beaupré, Patrick Hivon, Micheline Bernard, Ariane Castellanos, Madeleine Peloquin, Gabriel-Antoine Roy, Emma Olivier, Arnaud Vachon and Isabella Villalba. Production begins today in Montreal until the first week of December. Viking helmer Stéphane Lafleur is onboard as the editor.…...