Come True
Dreams and, even more commonly, nightmares belong to the oldest mainstays of the fantastic in art and fiction. In his second feature, emerging talent and one of sci-fi’s greatest hopes Anthony Scott Burns cultivates this very terrain, which is so hard to grasp—and so easy to bungle. Plagued by night terrors, a teenage runaway participates in an experimental sleep study, but instead of the promised rest, pure terror ensues as the dark figure from her dreams starts seeping into her waking reality and materializing with increasing clarity. Produced by the Canadian genre giant Vincenzo Natali (Cube, Splice), Come True is one of this year’s most original and emotionally resonating visions of terror.
O P E N E R
LAURA HASN’T SLEPT
Parker Finn | USA 2020 | 11′ | eOV
Desperate to rid herself of a recurring nightmare, a young woman seeks help from her therapist.
is an autodidactic artist from Canada. He shoots, edits, scores, writes, designs, and completes his projects in post-production. Burns spent his teens glued to a borrowed computer, making movies with little-to-no crew. Eventually starting his professional career in graphic design, he made a name for himself creating elaborate visual effects and shorts at MTV before switching over to the commercial world, where he creative/art-directed, shot, and directed dozens of award-winning campaigns. Though being offered Hollywood projects, Burns prefers to work in Canada on his lower-budget genre projects where he can express himself clearly and directly—much like one of his fellow countrymen and idols, David Cronenberg. Burns’s previous feature film, Our House, had its Austrian premiere at the SLASH Film Festival 2018.