The ICon International Film Festival

Film Catalog:

About the Festival:

Science fiction and fantasy transcend political and geographical borders, as well as creative ones. Fantastic cinema can achieve excellence even without any special effects (though, we do appreciate those now and again…) and present touching storytelling, innovative movie-directing and outstanding acting – as frontline comedies, dramas or thrillers. The International Fantastic Film Festival is Icon’s crowning achievement, providing a world-wide panorama of science fiction and fantasy works from various countries, cultures and languages, all testify to the above argument.

Icon 2006 has presented more than 50 full-length films and dozens of shorts, presenting the full spectrum of cinematic creation: features and documentaries, classics and contemporary, comedies and dramas, thrillers, parodies, horror movies, animation, and many in between. Represented films made their way from all over the world: the United States, France, Honk Kong, Russia (and the former USSR), Canada, Britain, Germany, Japan, South Korea, Thailand, Italy, Hungary, Spain, Switzerland and many more.

Icon is proud to host feature film premieres in the last few years. Icon 2006 was opened by the innovative French animation Renaissance (dubbed “the French Sin City”); Icon 2005 hosted the national sneak preview of Joss Wheadon’s Serenity (creator of “Buffy the Vampire Slayer”) and Icon 2004 hosted the national premiere of Alien vs. Predator.

Most screenings at Icon are special festival screenings and are not available elsewhere; Therefore Icon is a rare opportunity to watch them on the big screen, get acquainted with film industries from the world over and get a taste of their unique point of view on science fiction and fantasy.

Short films are the form that most movie makers begin with; with this thought in mind, in addition to the many full-length features, we offer the stage for a collection of quality international shorts, which, like the rest of the Festival’s films, are very carefully selected.

Festival Selection in recent years include…

The amazing visuals of Dave McKean’s and Neil Gaiman’s MirrorMask (Mr. Gaiman was the GoH at Icon 2006), Casshern and Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children; The anime hits for 2004 and 2005: Steamboy and The Place Promised in Our Early Days; crazy comedies such as the Turkish space adventure G.O.R.A, the Korean genre-blender Save the Green Planet!, Japanese Survive Style 5+ and the Pilipino Gagamboy (Spider-Boy…); Incident at Loch Ness and The Wild Blue Yonder by German esteemed film maker Werner Herzog; superb mockumentaries such as the poignant American C.S.A.: the Confederate States of America and the Russian Pervye Na Lune (First on the Moon); Documentaries on the various fandom groups present at the festival such as Trekkies, GamerZ, Life, the universe and Douglas Adams and many more; Lighter stories such as Free Enterprise and D.E.B.S, moving dramas like Special and Robot Stories alongside experimental film work such as A Wicked Tale from Singapore and American The Call of Cthulhu. Last but not least – a special place is reserved for Israeli fantastic cinema, such as the 2006 screening: Saint Clara and Made in Israel by award winning director Ari Folman, and Frozen Days by up-and-coming new director Danny Lerner.