Fantasia International Film Festival is headed to Montreal, Canada, from July 18 to August 4, 2024, and it will be showcasing genre cinema from action to sci-fi. (You can check out some of our anticipated picks here.) Escape Attempt is the US/Polish co-produced short film that will have its Canadian premiere at the festival, and it is helmed by Grammy Award-winning directors Alex Topaller & Dan Shapiro.

The film follows a soldier escaping a WWII concentration camp who finds himself on an unknown planet in the distant future. His luck runs out as he discovers another camp run by an evil alien race.

The science-fiction thriller stars Polish actors Andrzej Chyra (The Debt, Cracow Monsters) and Piotr Witkowski (Lesson Plan) and are joined by Anna Burnett (Outlander, Darkest Hour) and Ieuan Coombs (Older Gods). The film is based on the 1962 novel of the same name by writers Arkady and Boris Strugatsky.

About Escape Attempt

Synopsis: 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 had its world premiere at the Sitges International Film Festival and has won awards including the ‘Navigator Pirx Award for Best Sci-Fi Film’ at the Tallinn Black Nights HÕFF Festival and ‘Best Sci-Fi’ and ‘Grand Prize’ awards at FilmQuest.

The film will be part of Fantasia’s International Science-Fiction Short Film Showcase, which showcases 7 films from Australia, Spain, Canada, Sweden, USA, and Poland. It will be held on Sunday, July 21st at the Salle J.A. De Sève with Shapiro and Topaller in attendance.

“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 Christina Lazaridi (Nobody’s Watching), Daniel Shapiro and Alex Topaller, and produced by Lukasz Tomasz Koltunowicz. The executive producers are Jacek Kulczycki, Daniel Shapiro, and Alex Topaller with cinematography by Pils Kajetan.

Daniel Shapiro and Alex Topaller are founders of the Aggressive Design Studio, which has directed music videos for artists including Michael Jackson, Stone Temple Pilots, Megadeth, Juanes and Bloc Party.