Another year, another FilmQuest Film Festival. While last year I was able to go to the fest in Provo, Utah in person to do a series of live podcast recordings, I couldn’t make it work this year, but festival founder Jonathan Martin still wanted me to be a part of the festival, so I ended up scheudling four episodes on some of the films that screened at this year’s edition of the fest. Here’s a rundown of the episodes and the films covered.
First up was our episode on the sci-fi thriller ORION from director Jack Bouwer. I was joined by the one and only Joanna Jackson, assistant director of the FilmQuest Film Festival itself for this one.
Then we covered the deepfake thriller APPOFENIACS from director Chris Marrs Piliero with the help of director Jake Myers. We also discussed his own film KOMBUCHA making this the first of two double episodes for the fest.
After that it was time for the wild, ridiculous action horror revenge comedy HACKED: A DOUBLE ENTENDRE OF RAGE FUELED KARMA from writer/director Shane Brady and Emily Zercher, which we covered with filmmaker Hana Kazim. We then also talked about Hana’s film YATHOOM and her work in the world of Arab horror.
And we closed up the week of FilmQuest coverage with a follow-up with the filmmakers behind HACKED, discussing some of their actual influences and some behind the scenes stories from the making of the film.
Before all of these episodes kicked off, we also kind of unofficially started FilmQuest week with an episode with FilmQuest alumni Michael Klug on the Netflix thriller A HOUSE OF DYNAMITE. I met Michael at last year’s fest and we’d been trying to get him on an episode all year long, and the stars just happened to align for the episode to drop right along side all this FilmQuest coverage.
And that wraps up this year’s FilmQuest coverage! It would be great to be back in person in 2026, but with my new role as manager of Wax Trax Records, who really knows what I’ll be able to make time for outside of Las Vegas. But FilmQuest is always a great time and I do hope to be back in person sometime soon and if not, maybe we’ll cover it remotely again next year. Best of luck to all of these filmmakers and I’ll be resharing the episodes as these films go into wide release.
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