A Toronto-born short horror film is making its world premiere at Fantasia International Film Festival's 30th edition this summer in Montreal. PURGE, written and directed by Andrew Hamilton and produced by Torrin Blades, centres on identity, mental health and the cost of self-transformation. With cinematography by Keenan Lynch and a cast featuring Andrew Moodie, it signals the depth and ambition of Black Canadian genre filmmaking.
PURGE, a 15-minute sci-fi horror short filmed entirely in Toronto, is heading to its world premiere at the Fantasia International Film Festival's 30th edition this summer in Montreal (July 16 – August 2, 2026). Written and directed by Jamaican-Canadian filmmaker Andrew Hamilton and produced by Torrin Blades, the film weaves body horror with an unflinching look at mental health, identity and the cultural pressure to reinvent yourself at any cost.
What makes its journey to one of North America's most respected genre festivals particularly significant is the creative team behind it: a group of Black Canadian filmmakers and artists who have built careers at the intersection of personal storytelling and cinematic ambition. From the lens to the set to the screen, PURGE is a demonstration of what Black-led genre filmmaking looks like when it refuses to play it safe, and when the story comes from somewhere real.
I’ve struggled with anxiety and depression for most of my life, often wishing I could purge it from my body like a disease. I hated this “defective” version of myself and wanted nothing more than to escape it. David Cronenberg’s work showed me how genre can express what feels impossible to articulate regarding the human psyche and how our internal struggles can take physical form. PURGE follows the form of his work to explore what confronting that version of myself, the one I wanted to escape so desperately, would really look like.
- Director's Note
A story born from lived experience
Director Andrew Hamilton has spoken openly about the personal origins of PURGE. The film draws directly on his own experience with anxiety and depression, and his long-held wish to shed those feelings like something foreign in the body. He has cited David Cronenberg as a central creative influence, particularly Cronenberg's gift for externalizing internal psychological states into vivid, visceral imagery. PURGE follows that tradition, using genre conventions to explore something deeply human: the terrifying prospect that in trying to escape who you are, you might lose yourself entirely.
At the centre of the story is Gee, a writer trapped in cycles of anxiety, depression and stalled ambition. She joins a clinical trial at a pharmaceutical company called Glass Solutions, where an experimental drug called BriteNol promises a way out. After her body violently expels a dark substance, she feels a lightness and joy she has never known before. But as that transformation deepens, the people around her begin to notice that something has changed. What Gee eventually finds in the mirror no longer looks like her.
The producer building the path forward
Torrin Blades is one of the most purposeful creative producers working in Toronto's independent film scene right now. A 2025 graduate of the Canadian Film Centre's Producers Lab and an alumnus of the OYA Black Arts Coalition Emerging Producer Incubator, Blades has spent his career developing director-driven projects that amplify underrepresented voices while maintaining clear commercial intent.
His track record is already substantial. His previous film SOLEMATES premiered at TIFF 2024, screened at the Hong Kong International Film Festival and Regard International Short Film Festival in 2025, was acquired by Ouat Media and is now streaming on Crave. Another project, POP (2024), is currently in development as a feature. His producing credits also include the CFC shorts JOYCHAIR and TEFF SEEDS, as well as BROKE. For Blades, PURGE represents a deliberate move into genre territory, backing a director whose personal investment in the material is evident in every frame.
Keenan Lynch behind the lens
The visual language of PURGE carries significant weight, and much of that is down to director of photography Keenan Lynch. The Canadian cinematographer received a Best Cinematography nomination at the 11th Canadian Screen Awards in 2023 for his work on the 2022 film TEHRANTO, and his career has been recognized at festivals including the Toronto Black Film Festival, Blood in the Snow Film Festival, Austin's Capital City Black Film Festival and the Canadian Society of Cinematographers awards, among others.
PURGE marks his sixth collaboration with Andrew Hamilton, a creative partnership that has deepened steadily over years of shared work. Lynch's ability to translate psychological tension into visual atmosphere makes him a natural fit for a story as layered as this one.
Andrew Moodie on screen
On the acting side, PURGE brings in one of Canadian theatre and television's most distinguished voices. Andrew Moodie, who plays Vaughan, is an acclaimed actor and playwright whose work spans decades of Canadian storytelling. His play RIOT won the Floyd S. Chalmers Canadian Play Award in 1996.
His play Toronto the Good received a Dora Mavor Moore Award nomination for Best Original Play in 2009. On screen, he is best known for recurring roles in ORPHAN BLACK, where he played Simon Frontenac, and DARK MATTER, where he appeared as Teku Fonsei. Moodie's presence in PURGE connects the project to a long lineage of serious Canadian dramatic work.
Craft that earns the horror
PURGE's body horror sequences demanded a level of practical effects artistry equal to Hamilton's creative vision. Toronto-based Blackspot FX, owned and operated by award-winning prosthetic makeup artists Alexandra Anger and Monica Pavez, handled the special effects. The studio's portfolio includes David Cronenberg's Crimes of the Future and The Shrouds, Guillermo Del Toro's Nightmare Alley and Caitlin Cronenberg's Humane. Their involvement gives PURGE a technical foundation that places it firmly within the tradition of serious, craft-driven genre filmmaking.
The production also brought in composer Spencer Creaghan, whose television credits include SURREALESTATE (SYFY) and HEL MOTEL (AMC), as well as production designer Talia Missaghi, costume designer Xurui Wang and makeup/effects artist Nicole Soo. The cast and crew, shot on location across Toronto on an Arri Alexa, were intentionally assembled to reflect the city's cultural mosaic. The film was made possible through the Ontario Arts Council New Media Grant, one of Canada's most competitive arts funding streams.
Where the reflection leads
PURGE arrives at a moment when conversations about mental health, self-optimization and identity are louder and more urgent than they have been in years. The film uses genre as a container for ideas that resist easy articulation: what it means to despise a version of yourself, to seek escape through pharmaceutical transformation, and to face the possibility that the cure erases the patient. Hamilton's Cronenberg-influenced approach grounds these questions in physical, visceral filmmaking, resulting in a work that operates on multiple registers at once. It is horror, yes, but it is also a reckoning.
The selection of PURGE for Fantasia's 30th edition is a meaningful milestone for Hamilton, Blades and the wider team. Fantasia is one of the world's premier destinations for genre cinema, and a world premiere there confirms both the ambition and the craft of this Toronto-made film. For Black Canadian artists working in a space that has historically overlooked them, that recognition carries particular weight.
PURGE is the kind of project that expands what Black storytelling looks like on screen, making clear that horror, science fiction, and the most personal kind of filmmaking are not just compatible but, in the right hands, inseparable.
