A decade after the American Civil War, Edward Young returns home from a hunting trip to find a horrific reanimation of his wife and that their son Adam has disappeared. He must battle his way through an unexplainable outbreak of the walking dead.

Hot off the heels of Septic Man and Ejecta, genre studio Foresight Features and Pontypool writer Tony Burgess have unleashed the trailer for their third collaboration, and the company’s most ambitious film to date, the horror fantasy throwback HELLMOUTH. A visual mindwarp in the vein of F.W. Murnau meets Tim Burton, HELLMOUTH is director John Geddes’ (Exit Humanity) love letter to an era of forgotten cinema. Veteran actor in over 200 films, Hoser horror hero Stephen McHattie (300) is back, taking on two bigs roles within the film, including the leading role as a dying gravekeeper who must pass through Hell to save the soul of a beautiful woman, (Siobhan Giles Murphy). Full of gothic graveyards and monster mayhem, HELLMOUTH is based on an original screenplay by award-winning punk bard Tony Burgess. The film co-stars Julian Richings (Supernatural), Bruce McDonald (Hardcore Logo), Boyd Banks (Dawn of the Dead), and Ari Millen (Orphan Black).

The ostensibly simple story of a sympathetic veteran teacher giving Italian lessons to a weekly class of diverse immigrants is given infinitely more depth and complexity by the manner in which director Daniele Gaglianone renders his story. Blurring the lines between fact and fiction, truth and artifice, and between documentary and drama, Gaglianone has created a film within a film. You see the apparent artifice of Gaglianone’s crew using professionals, including the noted film actor Valerio Mastandrea as the teacher, interlinked with ‘real’ immigrant protagonists, studying the language to improve their chances of employment and of gaining a permanent residence permit. Thus in the course of the lessons there is simultaneously the painful and upsetting relation of the students’ personal stories but also humour, as they interact and share their humanity, bridging cultural differences, united in their striving to make a better life for themselves. (Source: LFF programme)