‘I Love Paris’ Review: The Next Great Mockumentary is Here [Fantasia 2026]
Thanks to its committed performances and an impeccably controlled aesthetic palette, Nicky Murphy gives us a mockumentary for the ages in I Love Paris, which quickly puts What We Do In the Shadows to shame.
Perhaps the buzziest world premiere at this year’s Fantasia International Film Festival, Nicky Murphy’s I Love Paris will likely go triple platinum once it eventually makes its way outside of the festival circuit. This wholly original – and daring – mockumentary is not only incredibly funny, but it also features a layered narrative that is genuinely interesting to parse, especially when one focuses on its titular subject, played by Aminata Thiboult.
Paris wants to take over the city’s music scene and has big plans for her career. She even hired a cameraman to film her creative process and potential rise to stardom, so a documentary can be made on her journey. Everything changes, however, when, in the middle of shooting, she is stalked by a strange woman, who has been following Paris’ blood trail after she cut herself while shooting an insignificant TikTok. Turns out, this person is a vampire and bites Paris, which transforms her into a bloodsucking creature. The woman who bit her, Lutèce (Leonor Oberson), feels deep remorse because Paris was supposed to die. However, since Lutèce bit her on a bright full moon, she turned into a vampire.
The rest of the movie examines Paris as she attempts to break into the scene while juggling her vampiric duties, hooking up with pop singer Mimi Madamour (Louiza Aura, reprising her role from Alexis Langlois’ Queens of Drama) to make her dreams a reality. What happens next is so unpredictable and wild that it would be a disservice to me to spoil the multiple surprises that occur in Murphy’s form-blurring mockumentary, one that reinvents the form and can be spoken in the same breath as the late Rob Reiner’s This Is Spinal Tap, arguably the most influential mockumentary ever made.
It’s hard for a movie that parodies a specific mode of filmmaking to work, but I Love Paris feels so authentic, and with tangibly human characters (despite their vampiric fangs) that it won’t be hard for anyone to fall in love with the film’s titular character. But should we sympathize with a protagonist who is only doing everything for her own self-interest? Murphy begins to float with that idea, especially as the whole movie is shaped around a song with the lyric “Why is it so hard to be alive?” which Paris sings both before and after she becomes a vampire. Perhaps it wasn’t the filmmaker's intention, but it’s hard not to see a certain throughline when this song returns in more than one instance and takes on a more devastating significance as Paris literally and figuratively struggles to “be alive” with her newfound appreciation for human blood.
Murphy isn’t afraid to push buttons in that regard and immerse us in a textured “real world” where vampires live underground and do some highly questionable things, including one particular item in a freezer that shocked a sold-out crowd at the J.A. de Sève auditorium during the film’s Fantasia world premiere. Laughter was also heard, but did we laugh because it was funny, or because of our “fight-or-flight” response, which attempted to process what was on screen and how far Murphy went? I’m inclined to think of the latter, because the film is very funny, while also knowing when not to rely too much on humor to draw vivid character relationships that feel so alive and electric. It’s precisely because of this that the humor works, because the characters are so attachable. One wanted to meet them immediately after the Q&A ended, which many did.
Of course, one has to try to keep a level head at festivals, where the audience sees an average of three or more movies per day, but it’s hard not to feel energized by what I Love Paris offers. This is the type of movie that Fantasia loves to champion and expose to audiences, because it feels so fresh and full of infectious energy that one wants to talk about it as soon as it’s over. In many respects, it’s this year’s breakout success, and one that will have a (very) long life after it leaves the Concordia walls and reaches your cinemas, hopefully much sooner than later.
Grade: [A]