Melbournians, prepare to feel even more smug about your lovely, wintery city. The 70th annual Melbourne International Film Festival (one of the world’s oldest, we remind you!) has a special focus on the town in which it’s taking place, revisiting films of the 1970s and 80s “Carlton ripple” alongside soon-to-be classics set in Victoria.
The festival runs from August 4 to 21 in cinemas across the city and state. The digital platform MIFF Play is back with select titles available to watch at home from August 11 to 28. But anyway you watch it, the 2022 lineup is an absolute dream.
There’s a bunch of titles we’ve already reviewed here at Flicks (The Silent Twins, We Are Still Here, Moonage Daydream, and Decision To Leave, just to name a few). And countless docos on your favourite musicians: everybody from Sinéad O’Connor and Jerry Lee Lewis to Thelonious Monk and Ennio Morricone.
Scroll to enjoy a delicate nibble of the full, flavoursome program. Members can currently buy tickets, with general admission available via the MIFF website from Friday July 15.
Of An Age
Goran Stolevski is an Aussie talent to keep an eye on. And we’re not just saying that because the director’s tender coming-of-age drama has been picked as MIFF’s Opening Night Premiere—he’s also got another movie in the festival, the eerie Macedonian horror You Won’t Be Alone. Of An Age is quintessentially Melbourne tale, following three swooning teens of immigrant families in the summer of 1999 as their ambitions and romantic desires ebb and flow.
Three Thousand Years of Longing
George Miller is granting all of our wishes with his nutty romantic fantasy, starring Idris Elba and Tilda Swinton as an ancient genie and his new master. Like any bookish academic, she knows that three wishes always lead to ironic and unforeseen side-effects, so she listens closely to his stories of previous lamp-bearers whose ambitions went horribly awry. We haven’t seen Miller delve into a dark world of magic like this since The Witches of Eastwick so it should be visually and tonally delicious at the very least.
Tori and Lokita
The two young African characters in the latest Dardennes Brothers migrant drama aren’t actually related, but they’re all each other has in a cruel and exploitative world. Prepare to sob and leave the cinema feeling a bit broken, as Tori and Lokita gets its Australian screen premiere. The film stunned audiences at Cannes with its preternaturally mature child acting and social realist style, raising questions of how society fails its most vulnerable members.
Mass
You might not feel prepared to watch a super timely, tearstreaked drama about the aftermath of a school shooting. But with a quartet of tremendous Hollywood acting talent and no actual screen violence depicted, Mass is certainly worth your time and ticket price. It’s actor Fran Kranz’s first feature, a chamber piece set in a church six years after that most American of tragedies, as one set of parents (Jason Isaacs and Martha Plimpton) confronts the parents of the shooter (Reed Birney and the always-remarkable Ann Dowd).
Triangle of Sadness
Find out what all the Cannes fuss is about with Ruben Östlund’s Palme d’Or winning black comedy. Woody Harrelson stars as the drunken captain of a super-rich yacht trip, where self-loathing supermodels must experience the most satirically bleak holiday of their lives. Uneasy laughs, despicable characters, and some shocking twists involving the asylum seekers that collide with the ship of fools should make Melbourne cinema-goers squirm in their fancy seats.
Crimes Of The Future
Oh brother. Oh boy. Our organs have been quivering with anticipation for David Cronenberg’s return to futuristic body-horror, and while a broad cinema release seems unlikely, Victorians can at least catch Crimes Of The Future at a few exclusive MIFF screenings. “Surgery is the new sex” for an ailing Viggo Mortenson, his carer/GF Lea Seydoux, and a seductive Kristen Stewart, who aren’t afraid to get gooey in the name of scientific progress and horniness.
The Afterlight
Charlie Shackleton’s arthouse feature is a once-in-a-lifetime experience—literally. Audiences around the world will watch as the single 35mm print of the collage-film deteriorates with each screening, snippets of gorgeous black-and-white footage lost forever as the movie is toured internationally. Every performer in the film is now dead, making your screening of The Afterlight somewhat of a cinematic funeral for the medium’s first glorious 50 years. Come and bask with other experimental Melbourne movie fans.
Speak No Evil
The MIFF program guide tries to warn us about just how intense and fucked-up this Danish and Dutch thriller is, but we’re gonna line up for it anyway. Filmmaker Christian Tafdrup set out to make “the most unpleasant experience for an audience ever” and has apparently achieved it, with this sordid tale of holidaying families turning into a stomach-churning challenge for viewers. If you’re definitely not one of those screen sickos, please promptly scroll down to the adorable next entry.
Marcel The Shell With Shoes On
Daww!! Probably the year’s cutest movie, Dean Fleischer-Camp adapts his sweet shorts into a feature with the help of comedian Jenny Slate’s irrepressible voice performance. Meeting the titular bb shell at an AirBNB, the director seeks to help little Marcel find his family, accidentally making him a viral YouTube star in the process. Your kids might love it but it’ll also be an utterly charming watch for skeptical old festival-goers who think they should be immune to some stop-motion and a baby voice by now.
Clean
Sandra Pankhurst brings dignity and joy back to the dirtiest part of human life: the process of “trauma cleaning” homes where a death has occurred. This brand new Australian doco follows up Sarah Krasnostein’s book The Trauma Cleaner, where Pankhurst’s turbulent, fascinating life was laid out in text. A survivor of childhood abuse, a suburban parent, a drag queen, a sex worker, a funeral director, and a transwoman, it’ll be enthralling to hear Pankhurst tell her own story onscreen in an unmissable feature-length portrait. Directed by Lachlan McLeod, it’s also MIFF’s worthy closing night gala choice.
Find tickets and more information on MIFF’s official website
