Fungi Feastival - Horror Movie, Gaia

Gaia is a 2021 South African ecological horror film produced and directed by Jaco Bouwer from a screenplay by Tertius Kapp. It stars Monique Rockman, Carel Nel, Alex van Dyk, and Anthony Oseyemi. In addition to the movie screening there will be fungi-inspired beverages and truffle popcorn plus prizes for fungi-themed dress-ups and for fungi nerds. The audience will be encouraged to participate in the screening of the film. There will be warnings so those who are squeamish can avoid the really scary bits. An injured forest ranger on a routine mission is saved by two off-the-grid survivalists. What is initially a welcome rescue grows more suspicious as the son and his father reveal a cultish devotion to the forest where a fungi of monumental proportions proliferates at night, gathering strength, threatening to take over the earth. Gaia has a lot to say about humanity's destruction of the environment and the tipping point we have collectively reached in the Anthropocene, but the film says it with creativity, flights of imagination and even humour. It's a thought-provoking and disturbing film.