Melbourne International Film Festival returns with expansive programme

Heralding a milestone celebration, the Melbourne International Film Festival (MIFF) has announced a monumental 70th program overflowing with premiere showcases, buzzworthy international features and special anniversary events in the festival’s first in-cinema Melbourne schedule since 2019.

Throughout August, Melbourne’s city and surrounds will be consumed by film, with 257 feature films, 102 shorts and 12 XR works on the bill for MIFF’s 70th anniversary. The 2022 line-up will showcase 18 world premieres, 12 international premieres and 177 Australian premieres, including a record 61 titles arriving from Cannes.

Across the festivities, MIFF’s 70-year role in connecting cinema with audiences will be honoured through curated ambassador screenings, star-studded guest appearances, expertly-executed restorations and an extensive Melbourne on Film retrospective.

The festival’s status as the Southern Hemisphere’s leading and longest-running film festival will be firmly cemented with the introduction of the MIFF Bright Horizons Competition.

Over 18 days (4-21 August), the 2022 in-cinema program will unfold across familiar metro sites, while a far- reaching suburban and regional program will see MIFF stretch its footprint across the state through the month. MIFF Play, the festival’s online streaming platform, will host 105 festival features and shorts, enabling audiences to join the party at home and across Australia from 11-28 August.

The MIFF Premiere Fund celebrates MIFF’s 70th with a record 11 films in the line-up, including Of an Age, from MIFF Accelerator Lab alumnus director Goran Stolevski, having the honour of being the Opening Night film at Hamer Hall, and Franklin, from MIFF Accelerator Lab alumnus director Kasimir Burgess, featuring as the first night film across MIFF’s nine-town regional program.

Of the landmark occasion, MIFF Artistic Director, Al Cossar, said: “MIFF in 2022 marks an extraordinary welcome back to Melbourne cinemas and beyond, following two years of COVID-19 disruption – a full scale program, suburban and regional expansions across nine country Victorian settings, and Australia wide access to an incredible film program via MIFF Play. On top of everything, we turn 70 years young, a milestone to celebrate by charting, across our program, the special connection MIFF has with Melbourne itself; and a moment to not only mark history, but make it, with the introduction of the extraordinary filmmakers of the Bright Horizons Competition. How special and exciting it will be for all of us to step back into the world of festival movie-going and share the magic of MIFF once more.”

MIFF AWARDS

For the first time in its 70-year history, 2022 will mark the launch of MIFF’s own in-festival competition program. As the Southern Hemisphere’s richest feature film competition, the Bright Horizons Competition will champion bold Australian and international directorial voices and fresh filmmaking talent, with a specific focus on first and second time features.

Minister for Creative Industries, Steve Dimopoulos, said: “In this landmark 70th year, we’re proud to support the festival to deliver a major new award that positions MIFF among the world’s top film events. The award, and our continued investment in the success of MIFF, are part of the Victorian Government’s VICSCREEN strategy which is delivering Victoria onto the world stage as a screen powerhouse.”

In addition to the flagship $140,000 Bright Horizons Best Film Award, The Blackmagic Design Australian Innovation Award will recognise an Australian filmmaking talent for their work – i.e. as director, creative lead or cinematographer – within a film screening at the festival, with $70,000 awarded to the winner.

The MIFF Audience Award will also return, with punters given the chance to vote for their favourite flick from across the festival program.

Presented by Nicolas Feuillatte, the MIFF Awards Ceremony will take place on 20 August at The Forum Melbourne.

BRIGHT HORIZONS COMPETITION

This year, 11 films within the Bright Horizons Competition will compete for the A$140,000 Best Film Award, supported by the Victorian Government through VICSCREEN.

Australian director Thomas M. Wright returns with a taut true-crime thriller starring Joel Edgerton and Sean Harris, direct from Cannes Un Certain Regard competition. Building on the intense exploration of masculinity that began in Wright’s widely-acclaimed debut Acute Misfortune (MIFF Premiere Fund, 2019), The Stranger is a thought-provoking meditation on trust, truth and identity.

Winner of the Berlinale’s Silver Bear Jury Prize, Robe of Gems shares a haunting exploration of the murky complexities of the Mexican drug trade and announces a daring new directorial talent. In her transfixing debut, Mexican-Bolivian film-maker Natalia López Gallardo – renowned for her work as editor for such names as Carlos Reygadas, Amat Escalante and Lisandro Alonso – constructs a world where hope is a rare fuel, and where agency and status dissolve in the chokehold of corruption.

Normal People’s Paul Mescal stars in Aftersun, a deeply felt Cannes-premiering drama about a father-daughter bond and the small moments that build, and those that threaten to break it. A spectacular study of human frailty and familial bonding, Charlotte Wells’ debut feature is poetic, melancholic and evocative – a treasure that will linger long in your mind.

Premiering at Sundance, Francisca Alegría’s debut feature The Cow Who Sang a Song Into the Future provides an absorbing and mysterious exploration of environmental issues, generational trauma and the transformative potential of each person’s choices. Richly visualised and boldly told, Alegria’s film arrives as a magic-realist vision – a timely, hopeful plea for a better ecological future.

A major hit at Cannes’ Directors’ Fortnight (where it was nominated for the Queer Palm) and across the global festival circuit, avant-garde cyber-musical Neptune Frost confronts ever-changing technology, racial capitalism, human labour and the slippery strictures of gender. Ten years in the making, this dazzlingly original debut is like nothing you’ve seen before: an unapologetically Black and queer astral trip from co-directors Saul Williams and Anisia Uzeyman.

Writer/director Martika Ramirez Escobar’s Leonor Will Never Die embraces the chaos of movie-making: it’s frequently hilarious and surprisingly moving, with an oddball finale that will make you believe in a truly happy ending. Winner of Sundance’s Special Jury Award for Innovative Spirit, this ambitiously meta feature debut is an audacious tribute to 80s Filipino action films and to the restorative power of storytelling.

In this Cannes-premiering drama, a widower resists attempts to oust him from the land where his wife’s spirit returns to him as an ethereal mist. Director Ariel Escalante Meza has crafted an intensely textural, immersive film in Domingo and the Mist that is both deeply meditative and bitingly political.

To prepare for her electrifying fiction feature debut, which won the Un Certain Regard Coup de Coeur Award at Cannes, director Lola Quivoron spent months hanging out with real suburban bikers. In Rodeo, a daredevil female motorcyclist revs after a place to belong in this high-octane French genre mashup of gritty underclass coming-of-age story and a biker-gang action flick.

First-time writer/director Fran Kranz skilfully stages this confrontation between two couples who come together for a painful emotional reckoning in the aftermath of a school shooting in Mass. Held aloft by finely calibrated performances from an exceptional cast of theatre veterans – Jason Isaacs (Streamline, MIFF 2021), Martha Plimpton, Reed Birney and Ann Dowd (The Handmaid’s Tale) – Mass develops a sensitive and sharp perspective on this most American of tragedies.

Winner of the 2021 Cannes Un Certain Regard FIPRESCI Prize and awards from the Gö¨teborg, Haifa, London and Sarajevo film festivals, Playground provides a gripping child’s-eye view of the cycles of bullying and how the schoolyard mirrors the ‘playground’ of adult life. Depicting the desperation that plagues children bereft of meaningful support from adults, Laura Wandel’s assured debut is a powerful yet empathetic rites-of-passage drama.

The bewitching second feature from MIFF Accelerator Lab alumna Alena Lodkina (Strange Colours, MIFF 2018), the MIFF Premiere Fund-supported Petrol follows an idealistic film student as she is drawn into an enigmatic performance artist’s shadowy world. Visually commanding and as singular as her prior debut, Petrol presents an otherworldly version of twenty-something life in Melbourne, complete with share houses, substances and the occult.

HEADLINERS

MIFF-goers will be among the first in the world to see some of the most hotly anticipated and critically acclaimed films of the international festival circuit, with a whopping 61 titles arriving fresh from Cannes.

Soaked in glimmering, noirish menace, Holy Spider, follows an intrepid female journalist (played by Zar Amir- Ebrahimi, who won Best Actress at Cannes) who hunts down a serial killer believed to be undertaking Allah’s work. Iranian-born, Denmark-based writer/director Ali Abbasi (Border) uses the true thriller’s lurid genre flourishes to show the full horror of a society that agrees some victims’ lives don’t matter.

Australian director George Miller trades in the post-apocalyptic world of Mad Max (screening as part of MIFF 70’s commemorative Melbourne on Film strand) for the luscious, dreamy aesthetic of Three Thousand Years of Longing (making its Australian Premiere following Cannes). Tilda Swinton and Idris Elba star in a delirious, albeit surprisingly cerebral and tender, fable about a lovelorn djinn. In his idiosyncratic way, Miller is challenging what big-screen storytelling can be, to memorable and magnificent effect.

The Breakfast Club meets the outback in Sweet As, an uplifting coming-of-age story with postcard-perfect shots of remote Western Australia and a road-trip-worthy soundtrack featuring all-Indigenous artists. Starring Tasma Walton (Mystery Road), Mark Coles Smith (Last Cab to Darwin) and a magnetic Shantae Barnes-Cowan (Total Control) in the lead, MIFF Accelerator Lab alumna Jub Clerc’s MIFF Premiere Fund-supported feature debut is an effervescent story of personal growth, acceptance and the journey towards finding oneself.

Starring Park Hae-il and Tang Wei (Lust, Caution), Decision to Leave is a twisty, bewitching love story wrapped in a thoroughly 21st-century murder mystery that’s deeply erotic. Park Chan-wook took home Cannes’ Best Director award for this enchanting, exquisitely seductive neo-noir romance – his first film since The Handmaiden (MIFF 2016). Even while recalling classics such as Basic Instinct and Vertigo, his latest work feels refreshingly unpredictable.

David Cronenberg’s first film in eight years, Crimes of the Future, sees him returning to his body-horror (dis) comfort zone, mingling the medical, the erotic and the technological. Viggo Mortensen, Kristen Stewart and Léa Seydoux – the last of whom also stars in MIFF 70 film One Fine Morning – all give enjoyably outré performances in this spectacular film that palpates the possibilities of how humanity will adapt to an ecosystem we’ve destroyed.

Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne present another heartbreaking, empathetic tale from the margins of Belgium’s underclass with Tori and Lokita, which won Cannes’ special 75th Anniversary Prize. Driven by the moving performances of non-professional actors, Pablo Schils and Mbundu Joely, the Dardenne brothers offer a plaintive and potent dramatisation of the personal fallout of the refugee crisis.

Acidly hilarious, Funny Pages is the directorial debut of Owen Kline, the former child actor best known for playing the younger brother in Noah Baumbach’s The Squid and the Whale. In this Safdies-produced coming-of- age black comedy, a comic-book nerd thinks he’s hit the mentoring/muse jackpot when he meets a cantankerous fiftysomething former colourist.

Scoring Ruben Ö¨stlund his second Palme d’Or plus an eight-minute standing ovation – and walkouts – at Cannes, Triangle of Sadness is a wildly funny, wildly outrageous satire of the vulgarly rich and beautiful. Following his satirical takedowns of male ego (Force Majeure, MIFF 2014) and art-industry pretence (The Square, MIFF 2017), Ö¨stlund now takes a sledgehammer to the jugular of obscene wealth in his first English-language film.

Legendary French director Claire Denis returns with a steamy, Cannes Grand Prix-winning romance-thriller starring Margaret Qualley and Joe Alwyn. Stars at Noon is a sexually charged adaptation of Denis Johnson’s 1986 novel and a sheer cinematic seduction – all danger and desire.

Léa Seydoux is sublime in Mia Hansen-Løve’s (Bergman Island, originally slated for MIFF 2021; Things to Come, MIFF 2016) deeply personal family drama about the upheavals and unexpected joys of everyday life, One Fine Morning. Premiering as part of the Directors’ Fortnight program at Cannes, where it won the Europa Cinemas Label for Best European Film, Hansen-Løve’s partially autobiographical latest work once again locates great empathy and humanity in the messy spaces of life.

AUSTRALIAN HIGHLIGHTS

Australian talent abounds once again in this year’s program, including the already-announced Closing Night documentary portrait of trauma cleaner Sandra Pankhurst in Clean and the record 11-strong Premiere Fund slate, which includes: Opening Night film Of an Age from director-on-the-rise Goran Stolevski; a trio of amazingly accomplished female coming-of-age stories in Sweet As (featuring in the Headliners strand), Moja Vesna (which was selected for Berlinale Generations), and Petrol (screening in MIFF’s Bright Horizons Competition); timely spotlighting of key mental health and social issues in Because We Have Each Other, Under Cover and Volcano Man; tackling the present environmental challenges in Greenhouse by Joost and Franklin; and, in the spirit of MIFF’s 70th, a look back at a key time in Australian film history with Senses of Cinema.

Written by its star Krew Boylan, Seriously Red is the narrative feature debut from director Gracie Otto, who channels the exuberant camp of P.J. Hogan’s Mental and Muriel’s Wedding into this affectionate celebration of fandom, identity and Dolly Parton. Stuffed with familiar singalong classics, the film sets the stage for a delightfully deadpan Bobby Cannavale, plus watch out for comedians Celeste Barber and Bob Downe, commentator Jean Kittson and a nearly unrecognisable Rose Byrne as an Elvis impersonator.

Based on the acclaimed stage production The Shadow Whose Prey the Hunter Becomes, Shadow is a groundbreaking film from world-renowned theatre company Back to Back that posits whether an AI-led near- future society will further disenfranchise the disability community. Winner of the Visions section’s Audience Award at this year’s SXSW, Shadow was directed by Back to Back’s celebrated artistic director Bruce Gladwin and brought to life by a cast and crew almost entirely made up of creatives with disability.

A suburban psychologist negotiates the lives, loves and anxieties of her patients in the magic-realist 12-part short-form black comedy It’s Fine, I’m Fine from MIFF Accelerator Lab alumna Stef Smith. Co-executive-produced by Gracie Otto (Seriously Red), this alternately hilarious, moving and insightful compendium of life’s ‘happy/sad’ mess features the likes of Heather Mitchell, Chris Bunton, Eryn Jean Norvill and rising star Catherine Van-Davies. The only Australian project selected this year for the prestigious Canneseries It’s Fine, I’m Fine is a fleeting, funny and refreshing work from an exciting screen talent.

INTERNATIONAL HIGHLIGHTS

A diverse roster of international films from all corners of the globe will touch down in Melbourne, showcasing an expansive line-up of world cinema at MIFF 70.

Elizabeth Banks gives a career-best performance alongside a shining Sigourney Weaver in this Golden Bear–nominated drama from director Phyllis Nagy, the screenwriter of Carol. With abortion rights once again threatened in the United States, Call Jane is a timely story based on the trials and triumphs of the real-word Janes movement and the activists who provided a lifeline to desperate women seeking reproductive autonomy.

Amanda Kramer (whose film Give Me Pity! also screens at MIFF 70) brings a deliberately theatrical aesthetic to Please Baby Please, a film that’s part Brechtian interrogation of identity, part absurdist quasi-musical, and an all camp embrace of melodrama and pseudo-philosophy.

Un Certain Regard’s 2022 Best Screenplay winner, Mediterranean Fever, explores a disarming odd-couple story of middle age, male bonding and mental health in the Middle East from Palestinian director Maha Haj. Set and filmed in Haifa, with an all-Palestinian cast, Mediterranean Fever is carried by remarkable central performances from Amer Hlehel and Ashraf Farah, both bringing meticulous nuance to characters whose individual struggles seem a world apart but ultimately bring them closer together.

Palme d’Or winner Hirokazu Kore-eda returns with a funny and moving film about an unlikely family unit on the run with an abandoned baby, starring K-pop singer IU and Parasite’s Song Kang-ho in his Cannes Best Actor– winning role. Much like the works that have come before it, Broker reaffirms Kore-eda’s status as Japan’s master humanist, capturing the many and magical ways that individuals can be bonded by blood or circumstance.

Set on a Native American reservation and made in collaboration with the Oglala Lakota community, Riley Keough and Gina Gammell’s Cannes Camera d’Or winning War Pony paints a distinctive, powerfully uplifting story of culture and coming of age. This grippingly intimate tale shows hints of Gus Van Sant and Chloé Zhao’s The Rider (MIFF 2018) as we witness the humour, hardships, aspirations and joys of two youngsters growing up on South Dakota’s Pine Ridge reservation.

Winner of multiple awards at the Busan International Film Festival, including Actress of the Year and the prestigious New Currents Award, The Apartment With Two Women offers an electrifying portrait of familial rupture. Tempering the film’s darker corners with even-darker humour, debut director Kim Se-in has crafted a truly visceral depiction of a mother-daughter bond that never quite stuck.

Marcel the Shell With Shoes On, the endearing viral video hit starring comedian Jenny Slate, is now a mockumentary feature that will warm the cockles of your heart. Seamlessly blending stop-motion and live action, this sweet, uplifting fable of reunion has proved a runaway hit across the US festival circuit.

Through a talented team of filmmakers from diverse Asian backgrounds, the camera is turned on the trajectories and tales of New Zealand’s female immigrant communities with Kā¯inga. In this third instalment in the trilogy that began with Waru and continued in Vai, viewers are invited into the homes and workplaces of eight different Asian women who have sought to put down roots in the land known as Aotearoa, tracing their struggles with family separation, self-reinvention and perceived outsider status.

DOCUMENTARY HIGHLIGHTS

Across a variety of topics, issues and debates, MIFF’s documentary strand will ask questions, probe answers and indulge in the inbetween.

Amiel Courtin-Wilson (Ruin) returns to MIFF with this unfaltering, compassionate exploration of voluntary assisted dying. Shot with incredible intimacy, Man on Earth follows Bob Rosenzweig, a 65-year-old Washington state resident and sufferer of Parkinson’s disease who is seeking to end his life. What unfolds is a moving celebration of vitality and passion in the face of mortality.

Visionary Harvard Sensory Ethnography Lab filmmakers Véréna Paravel and Lucien Castaing-Taylor craft a visceral hymn to life, death and the body unlike anything the cinema has ever seen. Alternately gruesome and gorgeous, De Humani Corporis Fabrica takes a literal deep dive inside the human organism, using impossibly microscopic cameras, X-rays, ultrasounds and endoscopic images to examine our complex inner ecosystems in unprecedented, sometimes harrowing detail.

Citizen Ashe is an entertaining and powerful documentary about the life and cultural impact of tennis icon Arthur Ashe, the first Black athlete to win a Grand Slam singles title. An audience and critical hit at the Telluride, BFI and Chicago film festivals, directors Rex Miller and Sam Pollard combine old photos, home-movie footage and vivid reflections from the likes of Billie Jean King and – Ashe’s tempestuous one-time student – John McEnroe into a portrait of a formidable sporting hero and his indelible influence.

Shooting from his wheelchair, filmmaker Reid Davenport sets out to make a film about how he sees the world, taking the audience inside his experience as an artist living with disability. Winner of Sundance’s US Documentary Directing Award, I Didn’t See You There is an exemplar of empathetic art-making that asks us to consider everyday life from a perspective too often neglected or misunderstood.

Off the back of SXSW, this captivating documentary from Emmy Award–winning directors Drea Cooper and Zackary Canepari (Flint Town) unpacks the improbable tale of the irreverent sub redditors who took on Wall Street at the height of the pandemic – and caused a financial sensation. Delivered in an antic rush of GIFs, memes and EDM beats, Diamond Hands: The Legend of WallStreetBets is a funny, provocative and sometimes despairing film for our times.

Italian cinema luminary Luca Guadagnino (Call Me by Your Name) tells the story of Salvatore Ferragamo, whose fancy footwear took him from the silver screen to the runway. Presented by Campari and featuring appearances from fellow fashion icons Manolo Blahnik and Christian Louboutin, cinema heavyweight Martin Scorsese and former Vogue creative director Grace Coddington, Salvatore: Shoemaker of Dreams is a real-life rags-to-riches story sure to entice cinephiles and fashionistas alike.

In Blue Island, activists young and old come together to recount Hong Kong’s recent and far-flung history as an epicentre of activism, exploring what it means to be a Hongkonger both now and in the years to come. Winner of Hot Docs’ Best International Feature Documentary Award and Visions du Réel’s Lightdox Award, Tze Woon Chan’s follow-up to Yellowing memorialises Hong Kong’s desire for self-assertion and its inhabitants’ perseverance in the face of a seemingly irreversible fate.

MUSIC ON FILM

Presented by Triple R, MIFF’s annual music strand returns once more with an excess of musical documentaries, features and shorts to satisfy cinephiles and music fans far and wide.

From Cannes comes a thrillingly immersive, kaleidoscopic trip through the art and music of iconic shapeshifter David Bowie, featuring stunningly restored and never-before-seen footage. The first documentary to be made in full cooperation with David Bowie’s estate and touted as this year’s biggest music film release, Brett Morgen’s Moonage Daydream unfurls as both a linear journey and a free-associative mind-trip through a singular career via the kind of avant-garde collage that the star would have loved.

Ethan Coen’s solo directing debut is a canny, enjoyable doc about rock ’n’ roll’s Killer wild-man that will appeal to longtime fans of Jerry Lee Lewis’s music and those new to his outrageous story. Built entirely out of archival footage – comprising vintage interviews with Lewis, plus those glorious, exhilarating performances – Jerry Lee Lewis: Trouble in Mind both speaks for, and damns the man known as Killer.

Exploding into global superstardom and imploding back into near-obscurity within just a few years, Ireland’s most controversial pop icon, Sinéad O’Connor, should have been the voice of her generation. Via intimate and incendiary archival footage, Nothing Compares paints a generous portrait of the artist as a young woman and provocative pop martyr, with director Kathryn Ferguson offering a compelling case for O’Connor as a guiding light for the current generation.

Age of Rage – The Australian Punk Revolution presents a raucous tour of the wild and revolutionary Aussie punk assault of the 1970s and 80s. Through music, photos, archival footage and testimonials, award-winning shorts filmmaker Jenny Ross rediscovers how the radical musicians and activists of this period found transgressive alternatives to the status quo, and in turn became a force to be reckoned with.

For his new film, director Andrew Leavold works off a wealth of archival material – photos, recordings, live performances – to explore the life and times of “the unofficial mayor of St Kilda”, Fred Negro who for decades chronicled the Melbourne rock scene in his weekly Pub comic strip. Featuring a line-up of local music legends including Tim Rogers (You Am I), Greg Macainsh (Skyhooks), Paulie Stewart (Painters and Dockers), Pub: The Movie is a film as loud and delightfully irreverent as its subject

THE NATURAL WORLD

This year, MIFF has brought together a timely selection of features and documentaries that seek to celebrate, protect and understand our natural world, presented by MINI.

From the frontlines of a man-made ecological disaster, this chest-heaving, thriller-like documentary cuts like a chainsaw at the heart of the Philippines’ fight for its environmental life. First-time director Karl Malakunas’ background in investigative journalism is on strong display in Delikado, a years-in-the-making exposé capturing the way that natural wonders can be warped into ideological battlefields.

A striking Sundance Grand Jury Prize winner and audience hit at Cannes, All That Breathes follows two brothers whose commitment to rescuing ill and injured birds, highlights the need for humans to care for nature – and one another. Against a backdrop of growing anti-Muslim violence, director Shaunak Sen eschews traditional documentary stylings in a majestic film that offers startling reminder of all that’s at stake in the face of cultural unrest and climate catastrophe.

Australian documentarian, and MIFF Accelerator Lab alumnus director, Eddie Martin (All This Mayhem) puts viewers on the frontlines of the deadly 2019–2020 bushfires, capturing the catastrophe with a perspective and scale never before seen. Taking six months to edit and created using only extensively researched, first-person archival footage, Fire Front immerses the viewer in the fire trucks, the control rooms and the homes of those affected, championing the heroes of the bushfires while pleading for change.

The first film in nearly 30 years from legendary Armenian auteur Artavazd Pelechian (The Seasons), Nature is a black-and-white, found-footage montage spotlighting the dramatic, inspiring and terrifying forces of Earth. With Pelechian now in his 80s, Nature is the result of 15 years of work and continues his lifelong fascination with the delicate tightrope that humanity walks in coexistence with the natural world.

NIGHT SHIFT

Not for the faint-hearted, this year’s Night Shift stream is set to terrify, unsettle and haunt the festival’s late- night cinema crowd.

A smash hit out of SXSW, Bodies Bodies Bodies is a whip-smart horror-comedy from Dutch director Halina Reijn, working from a story conceived by Cat Person author Kristen Roupenian. Starring Rachel Sennott, Amandla Stenberg and Pete Davidson, Reijn’s English-language debut is a bloody, wildly funny Gen-Z horror-comedy that mixes the classic whodunnit with reality-show sass.

In their second feature collaboration, which premiered to raucous acclaim as SXSW 2022’s Midnighters opener, Aussie co-directors Hannah Barlow and Kane Senes indulge in lampooning the hallucinatory look and feel – not to mention ravenous excess – of aspirational social media. The Canberra-shot Sissy, starring Aisha Dee (The Bold Type), takes you on a reaction roller-coaster: from screams of “LOL” to shrieks at the gnarliest gore in this depraved, decidedly local revenge tale.

Expanding her Goya Award–winning short of the same name (MIFF 2019), director Carlota Pereda’s long-form debut is a nuanced but exhilarating examination of adolescent ferocity – with a body count. Making its international premiere at MIFF, Piggy is a star-making vehicle for actor Laura Galán, who portrays the lead role of Sara with empathy and conviction in this brutally fresh and darkly comic take on the revenge genre.

Much as they did in The Endless (MIFF 2017) and Spring (MIFF 2014), filmmaking duo Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead direct, produce, edit and star in Something in the Dirt, a DIY sci-fi mind-bender with the kitchen-sink thrown in. Against the backdrop of a semi-apocalyptic, fire-ravaged LA, the film is a COVID chamber piece of sorts that also offers a blackly comic take on filmmaking itself via a highly meta, mockumentary framework.

Paying homage to classic voyeuristic thrillers by Alfred Hitchcock, Roman Polanski and Andrzej Ż˙uławski, feminist horror director Chloe Okuno (Slut, MIFF 2015) injects female agency into the ‘vulnerable woman being stalked’ trope in her feature debut, Watcher, which premiered in competition at Sundance. Maika Monroe (It Follows, MIFF 2014) stars in a stylish, slow-burn psychological thriller that uses its female gaze to raise questions about who’s watching, and why.

MIFF XR AND SHORTS

MIFF’s exploration of the emerging world of extended reality continues with MIFF’s first XR-commission, Night Creatures by long-term collaborators Isobel Knowles and Van Sowerwine, set to delight online and in cinemas in a celebration of that sacred space, the MIFF queue. The inaugural XR Commission has been developed and supported by artist and philanthropist Ling Ang.

Meanwhile groundbreaking new works are ready to be discovered for free via the MIFF XR Gallery, accessible at home to anyone with a computer or at ACMI with headsets supplied by HTC. Katrina Channells’ Speak of Country will allow users to soar across the spectacular Yuin Nation coastline in an airborne Kombi van and search for seven interactive objects that unlock cultural stories.

The 2022 MIFF Shorts program, presented by St ALi, features the best of the artform, including the 2022 Cannes winners, Story Chen’s The Water Murmurs and Shuli Huang’s Will You Look at Me. Closer to home, Cleverman’s Hunter Djali Yumunu Page-Lochard stars in Strange Country, a gorgeously shot First Nations mystery by Rhys Day. Also screening is George-Alex Naglei’s Mate, the first Australian film to win the International Grand Prix at the prestigious Clermont-Ferrand Short Film Festival.

CAMPARI CINEMA CLUB

A first for the festival, the Campari Cinema Club will be the official MIFF hub, taking up residency at ACMI in a special collaboration with HERO. The place to see and be seen during MIFF, the hub is the perfect spot for a pre- film tipple or post-screening feed, and will be open from 5pm until late each night of the festival.

SPECIAL PROGRAMMING AND EVENTS

A 70th anniversary is worthy of some very special events and the 2022 MIFF program has well and truly delivered. MIFF Signatures will see three of Australia’s most exciting filmmakers producing exclusive new works in honour of the 70th edition of MIFF. Justin Kurzel (Nitram, MIFF Premiere Fund, 2021), Ivan Sen (Mystery Road) and Soda Jerk (Terror Nullius) will each pen their own cinematic love letter to the festival, prompted by the statement ‘the moment a film and audience meet’. Debuting at Program Launch in July, the three works will be presented as pre-screening content throughout the 2022 festival, offering a kaleidoscopic visual identity of MIFF in its 70th year.

The previously announced Hear My Eyes event at Melbourne’s iconic Astor Theatre will feature a re-scoring of Andrew Dominik’s true-crime classic, Chopper, by Bad Seed member and multi-instrumentalist Mick Harvey (who composed the film’s original AFI-nominated score) and supergroup Springtime (Gareth Liddiard, Jim White and Chris Abrahams).

Meanwhile, a terrific treat awaits at Hamer Hall, where Orchestra Victoria will celebrate local cinema with performances of some of the most beloved scores from Victorian film history, including Picnic at Hanging Rock, The Railway Man, Mad Max, Noise, The Dressmaker and The Legends of the Guardians, in Sounds of the Screen: Movie Music Across Victorian Landscapes.

In a very special one-off MIFF 70 event, Bluey’s creator Joe Brumm will appear in conversation at the Astor Theatre, taking audiences behind the scenes on the hit series. Alongside Oscar-winning animator Adam Elliot (Mary & Max) as moderator, Brumm will speak to a selection of episodes that encapsulate his approach to animated storytelling while exploring those moments that have elevated Bluey into a true-blue cultural phenomenon.

Film historian, and former head of the London Film Festival and British Film Institute, Adrian Wootton OBE returns for the 10th Melbourne instalment of his Illustrated Film Talks. Already acclaimed from outings at London’s Barbican and New York’s Lincoln Center, this year’s lectures celebrate four amazingly talented artists whose enduring iconic status transcends their various milestones: Baz Luhrmann (and his 30 years in film), Cher (whose career clocks 60 years), Elvis (who left the building 45 years ago) and David Bowie (some 60 years after his professional debut).

A screening of Rob Murphy’s ode to projected film, Splice Here: A Project Odyssey will be held in tribute to the late David Thomas, MIFF’s Technical Manager for more than three decades. Featuring filmmaker Quentin Tarantino and critic Leonard Maltin, this new documentary is a personal journey through the rise, fall and rebirth of projected film. David Thomas, the man responsible for much of MIFF’s magic in the cinema sadly passed away in 2020 and is much missed.

The work of pioneering Hungarian auteur Márta Mészáros and French-Bosnian writer and director Lucile Hadžihalilović will also be honoured with two expansive Director in Focus programs.

Kids and big kids alike can enjoy the latest animated film from DC Entertainment, DC League of Super-Pets, with a special MIFF 70 Family Gala Presentation at the Astor. Featuring an impeccable cast of A-listers, including Dwayne Johnson, Kevin Hart, Kate McKinnon, John Krasinski, Natasha Lyonne and even Keanu Reeves as a troupe of super-powered pets who must band together to rescue the Man of Steel.

In addition to the Campari Cinema Club, an expanded selection of food and film dining experiences from much- loved restaurants such as Yakimono, Nomad, Supernormal, Cumulus, will be on offer.

MELBOURNE ON FILM RETROSPECTIVE

To coincide with the highly-anticipated book release of Melbourne on Film: Cinema That Defines Our City, and in celebration of the festival’s platinum anniversary, MIFF 70 will present a curated collection of undiscovered and rediscovered Melbourne films from the city’s colourful cinematic past.

From icons like the suburban black comedy, Death in Brunswick and the Michael Hutchence-led Dogs in Space, to groundbreaking works like Barbara Creed’s Homosexuality: A Film for Discussion or the rarely screened Violence in the Cinema…..Part 1 by George Miller, the program spans decades, genres and hair-dos. Presented by the University of Melbourne, the strand launches with a screening of Emma-Kate Croghan’s 1996 romantic comedy, Love and Other Catastrophes on 5 August.

Published in partnership with Black Inc., Melbourne on Film: Cinema That Defines Our City is an engaging accompanying collection of essays that pays tribute to the city’s unique creative history with writing from beloved Melbourne names, including Christos Tsiolkas, Sarah Krasnostein, John Safran, Osman Faruqi, Tristen Harwood and Judith Lucy. The book will launch as part of the MIFF Talks: Melbourne on Film panel discussion as filmmakers, writers and critics discuss our city’s representation on screen.

Melbourne on Film is available for pre-order now and is released 2 August.

2022 AMBASSADORS

The MIFF Ambassador program brings together some of the best and brightest from across Australian cinema, enlisting their expertise and experience to enliven the program with screenings, in conversations and talks.

This year’s ambassadors include Rose Byrne (also appearing in Gracie Otto’s Seriously Red); actor, writer and legend Uncle Jack Charles; director and producer extraordinaire Robert Connolly (who is executive producer of three MIFF Premiere Fund titles world premiering this year at MIFF, Petrol, Sweet As and Because We Have Each Other); actor Fayssal Bazzi (Stateless); actor and director Leah Purcell (whose debut feature, The Drover’s Wife opened last year’s festival); zero-waste advocate (and subject of this year’s MIFF Premiere Fund-supported Greenhouse by Joost) Joost Bakker; actor Chris Pang (Crazy Rich Asians) and the incomparable Rachel Griffiths AM.

Esteemed directors and MIFF ambassadors Justin Kurzel (Nitram, MIFF Premiere Fund, 2021) and Andrew Dominik (Chopper) will each curate and host MIFF Ambassador Special Screenings during the festival’s in- cinema season. Kurzel will appear in conversation alongside Booker Prize-winning author Richard Flanagan to discuss Flanagan’s sole directorial work, The Sound of One Hand Clapping. Along with the live-scoring of Chopper for Hear My Eyes, Dominik will also screen his two documentary works, One More Time With Feeling and This Much I Know to Be True, exploring the life and creative work of Nick Cave.