by FilmInk Staff
“This year, MIFF continues to evolve — to meet the moment, and to meet audiences where they are. What will not change is the extraordinary lineup of cinematic adventures, from home and afar, waiting for them. These are anticipated festival blockbusters, experimentations, breakthrough discoveries, and a huge lineup of incredible Australian talent. We will again share a world of cinema, reignited, to welcome Melburnians back to places far
beyond the familiarities of the last year,” said MIFF Artistic Director Al Cossar.
Top of the list will have to be Justin Kurzel/Shaun Grant’s NITRAM, which will enjoy its Australian premiere after being supported by the MIFF Premiere Fund. The always popular Centrepiece Gala will be Summer of Soul (…or, When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised), Questlove’s Sundance hit that tells an alternative narrative to the oft-played Woodstock.
Closing Night will see Natalie Morales’ Language Lessons starring Mark Duplass, and shot over zoom during lockdown (no eye rolling please). Speaking of Covid… Anthology film Year of the Everlasting Storm arrives straight from Cannes, and consists of 7 short films by filmmakers Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Jafar Panahi, Laura Poitras, David Lowery, Anthony Chen, Dominga Sotomayor and Malik Vitthal, responding to the pandemic.
Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s English language debut Memoria, starring Tilda Swinton and Jeanne Balibar, will also come straight from Cannes, along with Leos Carax’s Annette, Mia Hansen-Løve’s Bergman Island starring Tim Roth, Mia Wasikowska and Vicky Krieps, and Nanni Moretti’s Three Floors starring Alba Rohrwacher, Riccardo Scamarcio, Anna Bonaiuto and Margherita Buy, alongside Moretti.
Australian films this year include 11 Premiere Fund films, featuring productions such as Ablaze, Chef Antonio’s Recipes for Revolution, Hating Peter Tatchell, Little Tornadoes, Lone Wolf, Off Country, Paper City, and Anna Broinowski’s Uluru & The Magician.
After premiering at the Perth Arts Festival, Fist of Fury Noongar Daa arrives in Melbourne, redubbing Bruce Lee’s classic with an Aboriginal Australian language to comment on this country’s colonial brutality.
Other Australian titles include Jennifer Peedom’s River narrated by Willem Dafoe, Ben Lawrence’s documentary Ithaka about Julian Assange’s father, Eddie Martin’s The Kids, plus drama Streamline, the feature debut of Tyson Wade Johnstone, based on the experiences of Ian Thorpe Also, straight from Rotterdam is James Vaughan’s Friends & Strangers.
International documentaries include Andrea Arnold’s Cow, Marilyn Agrelo’s Street Gang: How We Got to Sesame Street and Roadrunner: A Film About Anthony Bourdain by Morgan Neville.
To check out the full program, head to the Melbourne International Film Festival website.
