A body-snatching comedy about two roommates who stumble into another plane of existence while buying groceries had its world premiere on 25 July at Montreal's Fantasia International Film Festival. Sour Minnows, the second feature from writer-director Harrison Atkins, screened in the festival's Cheval Noir competition section at 18:45 local time on Saturday, according to the official Fantasia schedule.

The film opens with six men lying face down on a deserted Los Angeles street, licking the pavement. From there it follows Ricky (David Brown) and Tepper (Chase Williamson), roommates who accidentally slip into a different plane of existence on a routine grocery run. Things get stranger: Ricky becomes the victim of "The Yellow Thing," a being that temporarily takes over his skin and wears him. Variety, which named the film one of its "10 Must-See Movies" at this year's festival, describes it as a hangout movie crossed with surreal body-snatching comedy (Variety).

Brown is known for the mockumentary series Jury Duty; Williamson for the thriller The Guest; and Suzanna Son, who plays Aura, for Sean Baker's Red Rocket. Atkins himself is credited as director, writer and producer, sharing producing duties with Kate Banford and Mel Barnes (Fantasia Festival).

Eleven years separate Sour Minnows from Atkins's debut feature, Lace Crater (2015), per the Fantasia Festival's official film page. Speaking to Variety after the premiere, Atkins said the script began as an eight-page document that grew to over eighty, a cross between a screenplay and a poem. He went through roughly forty drafts before cameras rolled.

Fantasia, now in its 30th edition, announced Sour Minnows as part of its first wave of titles back in May (Fantasia Festival). The festival runs through early August in Montreal, with the Cheval Noir strand serving as one of its marquee competitive sections — a juried showcase for international genre cinema.

For a film this long in the chamber, the premiere lands as the end of a patient chain of decisions: the drafts rewritten, the cast assembled, the festival slot secured. Where Sour Minnows goes from here — a sales agent, a distributor, a release date — is the next chapter, and one the Fantasia audience may have just watched begin.