The Melbourne International Film Festival‘s program is out now, sending us madly scrambling around our calendars to fit in as many choice offerings as possible.
From Cannes winners to local documentaries, there’s dozens of features and shorts to keep us occupied between 3-20 August in cinemas — and then online via MIFF Play from 18-27 August.
So, here we’ve tried to make it a little easier by serving up a few sample suggestions based on what we’ve seen at other festivals so far, or are just really looking forward to.
MIFF and MIFF Play tickets are now on sale via their official site, where you can also find the full program. See you there!
Anatomy of a Fall
In recent years, the Palme d’Or has been awarded to a Korean thriller that touched on colonialism and imperialism, a satirical black comedy about a celebrity couple on a cruise, and a body horror film where someone has sex with a car. This year’s Cannes winner is a tense, superbly performed, crisply shot, and constantly surprising courtroom drama. Read our full review.
Monster
Truth, lies, consequences and the convenience of labels are just some of the things Hirokazu Kore-eda explores in this beautifully nuanced and multi-angled story. In MONSTER, we get a masterclass of a character study, tapping into the same magic and innate understanding of children as Nobody Knows (2004). Read our full review.
Strange Way of Life
Proving that good things sometimes do come in small packages, Pedro Almodóvar’s queer Western short film has compact storytelling that speaks volumes. Playing as part of the Auteurs Abridged: New Shorts by Masters program — alongside short films from Pedro Costa, Lucrecia Martel, Jean-Luc Godard, and Tsai Ming-liang — this won’t be forgotten quickly. Read the full review here.
May December
Todd Haynes. Natalie Portman. Julianne Moore. Do we need to convince you any further? The film follows the 30-something Gracie (Moore) years after she had a relationship with a 13-year-old boy and served time as a result. Decades later, Portman’s character is portraying her in a film, and her attempts to get close to the subject have unexpected results.
Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman
As weird and magically real as you’d imagine from the mind of Haruki Murikami, the ripple effect of the 2011 earthquakes reverberate through all of the interconnected pieces of this animated film. Its very nature is a puzzle that has no answer. Like the feline Noboru Watanabe, itself a deep dish reference for Murukami fans, it exists both inside the box and outside. A narrative Schrödinger if ever there was one. Read our full review.
Ego: The Michael Gudinski Story
A documentary paying tribute to Michael Gudinksi, best known for starting Mushroom Records and signing the likes of the Skyhooks, The Choirboys, Kylie Minogue, and New Zealand’s Split Enz alongside newer artists such as Eskimo Joe and Evermore. EGO: THE MICHAEL GUDINKSI STORY features interviews with Kylie Minogue, Dave Grohl, Sting, Ed Sheeran, Bruce Springsteen, Billy Joel and Jimmy Barnes in this film by acclaimed director Paul Goldman (Suburban Mayhem, MIFF 2006).
Showing Up
Kelly Reichardt has long been a favourite of festival goers, and her collaboration with Michelle Williams (Wendy and Lucy, Certain Women, Meek’s Cutoff) has been a fierce one. In her latest film, the duo explore the portrait of the artist as a working woman. You might also want to check out Reichardt’s art about art in the short films Bronx, New York, November 2019 and Cal State Long Beach, CA, January 2020, both available freely online.
Cobweb
Beginning with The Quiet Family in 1998, Kim Jee-Woon’s remarkably dark comic streak and refined sense of cinema has earned him a legion of fans. It’s continued through crossover hits like A Tale of Two Sisters (2003), The Good, The Bad, The Weird (2008) and I Saw the Devil (2010). Now Kim combines that love of cinema and black comedy by taking us through a rarely seen slice of South Korean cinema history. A knowing, irreverent and deeply dark comedy about filmmaking. But it’s also about ego, secrets, and spiders. Read our full review.
Past Lives
Exploring the Korean concept of ‘inyeon,’ filmmaker Celine Song tells this romance in 12-year leaps in a way that is said to appeal to fans of Richard Linklater’s Before trilogy. It’s out in Australian cinemas at the end of August as well, but if you’re like us you probably can’t wait.
Little Richard: I Am Everything
There’s a tradition in our household: a music documentary at SFF or MIFF each year. The 2023 edition doesn’t disappoint, examining the queer Black origins of rock ’n’ roll via this icon of sound and stage. Interviews with Richard and his family sit alongside chats with Billy Porter, John Waters, Mick Jagger, and a whole stack of performance footage. Wop bop a loo bop a lop bam boom!
Walk Up
Because it wouldn’t be a recommendation for a festival if I didn’t included at least one Hong Sang-soo film here. Coming out prior to his other 2023 film (In Water), Hong’s film tells four stories (or maybe just one) over four storeys in what MIFF describes as a “chamber play set within a single building.” Expect talking, drinking, smoking, and regular players Kwon Hae-hyo, Park Mi-so and Lee Hye-yeong.
