A truly mind-blowing paranoid thriller about a war between telepaths—the film that made a name for Cronenberg. Screening as part of the All Tomorrow’s Scars. Directed by David Cronenberg film programme.
Scanners
- Date:
- from 11 Jul 2026, 18:00
- Age restrictions
- 18+
1980, David Cronenberg
Canada
103 minutes, English with Russian subtitles
Starring: Stephen Lack, Michael Ironside, Patrick McGoohan, Jennifer O'Neill
T
A scanner is a person capable of penetrating the minds of those around them. One of them is speaking at a ConSec company presentation, unaware that there is another scanner amongst the guests—one far more gifted and filled with hatred for the corporation. It will be no trouble for him to make the speaker’s head burst like an overripe watermelon.
Shot from Scanners, 1980
Scanners was the film where Cronenberg’s intellectual pursuits most obviously meshed with his love of staging shootouts, car crashes, and stalkings.
—Kim Newman, The Criterion Current
Scanners was Cronenberg’s first film to gain popularity outside Canada. Some of its features seem dated today, but the director’s very idea of the impending inability of the mind to cope with the flood of information seems a grim prophecy that has come true.
