Next week, home audiences around the world can take a harrowing trip down 200 years of European horror fiction as Lakeside Animation and Vortex Media release Red Iron Road on AVOD. The first season of the award-winning animated anthology will be available to stream starting December 19 on various platforms, including:
- Prime Video –Canada, U.S., U.K., Australia, New Zealand
- Tubi — Canada, U.S., Australia, New Zealand
- Plex — Canada, U.S.
Created by Aljosha Klimov and Iouri Stepanov, Red Iron Road’s first season showcases six installments, each with a different director adapting a different author’s tale of terror with a distinct animated style. Stepanov and his studio Lakeside Animation co-produced the series with Metrafilms in Moldova. Production began in early 2020, with creative teams across Canada and Europe working in close collaboration with the producing studios.
“Lakeside is thrilled to share our new series with the world,” said Stepanov, “We are immensely proud of the series and all the hard work all the directors and creative teams have put into it. Audiences will never forget their journey along the Red Iron Road.”
Episodes of Red Iron Road have screened around on the festival circuit, picking up numerous awards and recognitions. Segments have been selected for Annecy Festival, Screamfest LA, FilmQuest, Toronto After Dark, Blood in the Snow, New York City Horror Film Festival, Tokyo Anime Awards Festival, Crystal Palace Film Festival in London and the Phoenix International Horror & Sci-Fi Film Festival, to name a few.
A second season of Red Iron Road is already in the works. The first episode, In The Heat, was recently completed and competed in the Annecy Festival and the Ottawa International Animation Festival. The remaining five episodes of season to are now in pre-production will be available in Q4 of 2024.
Season 1 episodes are:
- VRDLK: Family of Vurdulak — Directed by Sam Chou of Look Mom! Productions (Canada) — A traveller caught in a snowstorm is forced to take shelter with a poor Serbian family. When the family warns him of “beasts” that hunt in the night, he mistakenly dismisses their fears as superstition and fairy tales.
- The Forest King — Directed by Lubomir Arsov (Canada) — A young boy’s desire for success and status in a VR game leads him into a terrifying new reality
- The Ratcatcher’s Daughter — Directed by Adam Jeffcoat & Jim Bryson of Studio NX (Canada) — Using defining moments in history, rats are trying to seize power all over the world. 1920, in Petrograd, the rats decide it is time to rise from the underground.
- The Undertaker — Directed by Sergei Kibus of Nukufilm (Estonia) — Adrian the Undertaker, a gloomy and silent man, doesn’t have many friends. Nevertheless he decides to throw a party and invites only his favorite people: his deceased clientele.
- Lord — Directed by Aljosha Klimov (Germany) & Hirofumi Nakada (Japan) — Environmental disasters, wars and epidemics led to the near destruction of human civilization. The survivors of the disaster have built new cities and settlements and battle mutant foes for supremacy.
- No. 8 Reporting — Directed by Aljosha Klimov (Germany) & Matthew Lyon (Canada) — Citizens from the well-fed, fenced off city can only venture beyond the walls on a train that distributes humanitarian aid. One reporter is determined to find out what really happens outside the city.
Learn more at lakesideanimation.com/redironroad.
