Escape Attempt: New Sci-Fi on way to Fantasia Festival 2024

Grammy Award-Winning Directors Alex Topaller & Dan Shapiro Head to Fantasia with ESCAPE ATTEMPT

“The team from Aggressive is heading to Montreal for the Canadian premiere of their award-winning film ESCAPE ATTEMPT, which debuts at the Fantasia International Film Festival on July 21st, 2024. Directed by Grammy Award-winning Daniel Shapiro and Alex Topaller, the epic science-fiction thriller stars esteemed Polish actors Andrzej Chyra (The Debt, Cracow Monsters), Piotr Witkowski (Lesson Plan) and is based on the 1962 novel of the same name by acclaimed science fiction writers Arkady and Boris Strugatsky. The U.S./Poland co-production also stars Anna Burnett (Outlander, Darkest Hour) and Ieuan Coombs (Older Gods).

In ESCAPE ATTEMPT, a soldier escaping a WWII concentration camp, finds himself on an unknown planet in a distant future only to discover a frozen gulag controlled by a brutal alien race. The short film, which had its world premiere in competition at the Sitges International Film Festival, has won numerous awards internationally including the ‘Navigator Pirx Award for Best Sci-Fi Film’ at the Tallinn Black Nights HÕFF Festival, ‘Best Sci-Fi’ and ‘Grand Prize’ awards at FilmQuest. The film is debuting to Canadian audiences for the first time in the International Science-Fiction Short Film Showcase.

“When we first decided to create Escape Attempt, we envisioned it as a warning. But sadly, over the course of our production of the film, the horrible events unfolding around the world have turned it from an imagining of a possible future, into a dire commentary on the present,” says co-directors Shapiro and Topaller. “At the film’s core lies a fundamental question about history and the nature of humanity: is change possible? Can humans shift the way they behave, or are we forever condemned to re-enact past tragedies?”

ESCAPE ATTEMPT was directed by Daniel Shapiro and Alex Topaller, written by Academy Award-nominated screenwriter Christina Lazaridi (Nobody’s Watching), Daniel Shapiro, Alex Topaller, produced by Lukasz Tomasz Koltunowicz, executive producers Are Jacek Kulczycki, Daniel Shapiro, Alex Topaller and cinematography by Pils Kajetan.

New York based, design-driven studio Aggressive has directed music videos for some of the world’s biggest artists including Michael Jackson, Stone Temple Pilots, Megadeth, Juanes and Bloc Party, as well as a number of broadcast and online spots for clients such as Ford, Toyota, Ralph Lauren, Anna Sui, Marc Ecko, MTV, Subway, AT&T, Bloomberg and more. Aggressive’s recent project MURALS, which debuted at the 2023 Cannes Film Festival highlights the on-going war and suffering in Ukraine, and won the Audience Award for Best Art and XR at BFI London Film Festival and just won “Best International Project” at DocEdge Festival in New Zealand.

The International Science-Fiction Short Film Showcase 2024 features 7 films from Australia, Spain, Canada, Sweden, USA, Poland and takes place at Fantasia on Sunday, July 21st at the Salle J.A. De Sève. ESCAPE ATTEMPT filmmakers Daniel Shapiro and Alex Topaller will be in attendance at the screening and at the Frontières Market.”

“Daniel Shapiro and Alex Topaller, founders of the Aggressive design studio, deliver the US/Polish co-production ESCAPE ATTEMPT based on the Strugatsky Brothers’s novella of the same name. It’s a visually sumptuous creation, with shadows of Soviet sci-fi and a considerable degree of philosophical urgency. Best not to spoil the plot, other than to say that it concerns a man striving to get to an uninhabited planet.”
– Mitch Davis, Fantasia

You can check out the trailer for Escape Attempt below.

Escape Attempt – Film

More From Fantasia Film Festival 2024

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