Nicky Murphy's vampire mockumentary I Love Paris has won the Gold Audience Award for best international feature at the 2026 Fantasia International Film Festival, the festival announced on 5 August (Variety). The French-language film, which also took the Midnighter Audience Award at SXSW earlier in 2026, was voted the top international feature by festival-goers — the festival's audience awards are decided entirely by ticket holders, not by a jury panel.

The 30th edition of Fantasia ran from 16 July to 2 August in Montreal, opening with the Canadian premiere of Her Private Hell and closing with the world premiere of Freaks Part II (Fantasia Festival). The audience awards were announced after the festival had already named its juried prize winners.

Taking the silver in the best international feature category was Kasper Kalle's No Rest for the Wicked, a co-production from Denmark, the Faroe Islands and Iceland. The bronze went to Oliver Bernsen's Bagworm from the United States (Variety).

In the animation category, Masanao Kawajiri's Cherry and Virgin won the Gold Audience Award for best animated feature, as confirmed by both Screen Daily and Screen Anarchy. The Japanese film had already drawn attention at the festival, receiving a Special Mention from the jury in the Satoshi Kon Award for Excellence in Animation section, a juried prize named after the celebrated Japanese animator (Anime News Network). Winning both an audience vote and a jury mention is a rare double — the two panels rarely converge on the same title.

Rounding out the audience winners, Yusuke Iwasaki's Anymart took best Asian feature, Michael Gabriele's Unholy Night won best Canadian feature, and Gary Kent's Bruised Sky from the United Kingdom won best international short (Variety).

Hanna Bergholm's Nightborn took top honours among the festival's juried awards, as listed on the Fantasia Festival website.

Alongside the awards, Fantasia confirmed its 2027 dates in the same announcement on its own website (Fantasia Festival). The festival, founded in 1996, has built a reputation as a leading North American showcase for genre cinema — horror, fantasy, science fiction and the harder-to-classify films that fall between.

For a mockumentary about vampires to win a festival-wide audience vote in its milestone 30th year says something about the loyal crowd Fantasia has cultivated: they reward films that take genre conventions and bend them into unexpected shapes.