Click here to see the highlights reel of the Premiere Fund, which provides minority co-financing to support production of new Australian feature films that will then premiere at MIFF. Funded by the Victorian State Government since 2007, and focusing on “Stories that need telling,” the Premiere Fund has supported more than 90 projects to date.
Premiere Fund-supported films are frequently amongst the most popular at MIFF – and the recent 70th edition was no exception with five Premiere Fund titles making it into the top 10 most popular films as voted by the MIFF 2022 audience from the festival’s more than 370-strong program (including 257 features). Coming-in at number ten was OF AN AGE, at number nine was FRANKLIN (from Accelerator Lab alumnus Kasimir Burgess and currently in cinemas), whilst SWEET AS was the eighth most popular film and in third place was VOLCANO MAN.
Special congratulations to GoodThing Productions, whose GREENHOUSE BY JOOST was crowned by MIFF audiences as the most popular film at the 2022 festival. The film releases next month with a line-up of exciting Q&A events.
The Premiere Fund had a record 11-titles on its slate for MIFF 2022, with key themes including environmentalism and sustainability, the housing crisis, diversity, inclusion, coming-of-age, and the desire for human connection; 63% of the slate’s titles had regional themes/shoots, 54% youth themes, a third had LGBITQ+ themes/major characters, 45% Culturally And Linguistically Diverse (CALD) themes/major characters, 27% First Nations’ themes/major characters, and a third of the films significantly featured languages other than English. Accelerator Lab alumni directed one-third of this year’s Premiere Fund slate, 63% of which had female directors and 54% had female producers, whilst 45% had creative principals from CALD backgrounds, 27% had LGBITQ+ creative principals, and 9% First Nations.
