Stephen A Russell takes a look at some of the hottest tickets in this year’s massive MIFF program.
The Melbourne International Film Festival (MIFF) returns for its 72nd hurrah on August 8, opening with award-winner Memoir of a Snail, the latest lush stop-motion animation from Oscar-winning Australian filmmaker Adam Elliott that features the vocal talents of Sarah Snook, Eric Bana and Jacki Weaver.
Along the way to closing night, there’s a monstrous Godzilla marathon and a retro screening of Ted Kotcheff’s cracking outback shocker Wake in Fright with a live score by Surprise Chef.
With so much to choose from, we’ve narrowed it down to ten must-sees.
Megalopolis
A colossal folly or the mad cinematic genius we’ve been waiting for? Wherever you fall, there’s no denying the feverish anticipation that awaits what may well be Apocalypse Now, Bram Stoker’s Dracula and The Godfather director Francis Ford Coppola’s final fling. Set in an uncanny New Rome, standing in for the fall of the US empire, Adam Driver is our Caesar in this Palme d’Or-nominated sci-fi parable that’s jam-packed with stars including Nathalie Emmanuel, Giancarlo Esposito, Aubrey Plaza, Jason Schwartzman and Laurence Fishburne.
The Substance
Another of the buzziest films to spring from this year’s Cannes Film Festival, the latest from Revenge filmmaker Coralie Fargeat is an 80s-style body horror that rips out the spine of Hollywood’s hoary old sexist and ageist bullshit. Something Ghost star Demi Moore knows a thing or two about. She plays a TV workout guru who gets axed, discovering a strange process that can birth a younger body with your consciousness (Margaret Qualley) while you recuperate. But what happens if this new you won’t swap back?
Ellis Park
This year’s MIFF Music on Film Gala marks the world premiere of this remarkable documentary tracing the life story of Australian film score composer extraordinaire and beloved band member of The Dirty Three and Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, Warren Ellis. As directed by Snowtown and True History of the Kelly Gang helmer Justin Kurzel, this is more than just a barnstorming music doco; it also offers a sneak peek into Ellis’ lifelong passion for conservation and the Sumatran wildlife sanctuary that bears his name.
The Seed of the Sacred Fig
Mohammad Rasoulof joins a long list of heroic Iranian filmmakers who have risked everything through their artistic resistance, narrowly escaping the country on foot when threatened with imprisonment for this Cannes Jury Special Prize and FIPRESCI Award-winner. A nerve-twanging thriller, it spins out of control when a recently promoted lawyer (Missagh Zareh) discovers the startling secrets of his new state investigator role just as his daughters join the nationwide pushback against enforced hijab-wearing. Also look out for the Iranian New Wave retrospective.
Inside
In competition for MIFF’s Bright Horizons Award, this fraught Australian prison drama marks the feature debut of Charles Williams, whose 2018 short film All These Creatures won a bucketload of prizes. Emerging actor Vincent Miller plays Mel, a young lad who’s just aged up from youth detention to maximum detention. Winding up cell mates with Shōgun star Cosmo Jarvis’ infamously explosive Mark, the older man’s bitter rival, Warren (Memento star Guy Pearce), spies a way to strike back at his mortal enemy. Also look out for Pearce in the new David Cronenberg creeper, The Shrouds.
Grand Tour
Portuguese director Miguel Gomes’ Cannes Best Director-winning misadventure stars his compatriot Gonçalo Waddington as hapless Edward, a Great War-era British diplomat (nevertheless speaking Portuguese). Chickening out of marrying his fiancé Molly (Crista Alfaiate), Edward goes on the run from Rangoon to Raffles bar in Singapore and onwards with nary a clue as to what he’s doing, and Molly in hot pursuit—this gleefully anachronistic film leaping between abundant colour and pristine black-and-white cinematography.
Motel Destino
Brazilian artist and filmmaker Karim Aïnouz’s steamy 2019 melodrama The Invisible Life of Eurídice Gusmão was embraced by MIFF goers. He captivates again with this stylishly heightened fever dream set in a pit stop sex-on-premises joint near the sea. Petty crim Heraldo (Iago Xavier) is hiding out from drug dealers, but when he’s fleeced and then set to work, he makes things worse by getting the hots for the partner (Nataly Rocha) of his new boss (Fábio Assunção). There may be trouble ahead, but there’s also moonlight and magic.
Viet and Nam
Shooting on classic 16mm, Vietnamese filmmaker Truong Minh Quy’s beautiful latest feature centres on the secret romance shared by two young coal miners (Thanh Hai Pham and Duy Bao Dinh Dao toiling away in the hardscrabble dark below the central highlands. One hopes to get out of here and head for Europe, while the other can’t imagine being anywhere else. Can these two lovers figure it out in this often literally dreamy queer film that’s set in the shadow of 9/11 and is also haunted by the long scar of the Vietnam War?
Tuesday
Channelling Edgar Allan Poe up to a point, Death comes in the form of a size-shifting macaw who also happens to love hip-hop in Croatian filmmaker Daina Oniunas-Pusic’s magical realist fantasy backed by American indie powerhouse A24. Veep star Julia Louis-Dreyfus excels as Zora, a despairing mother who is doped to the eyeballs on pure-cut denial, trying to bargain with the feathered harbinger to buy more time as her terminally ill daughter Tuesday (Dating Amber’s Lola Petticrew) accepts her rapidly approaching fate with grace.
On Becoming a Guinea Fowl
Zambian-Welsh director Rungano Nyoni’s exhilarating debut feature I Am Not a Witch mesmerised MIFF audiences in 2017 and scored her a BAFTA the following year. She casts an unforgettable spell all over again with this absurd dark comedy that eviscerates the complicity of silence around sexual abuse that’s also up for the Bright Horizons Award. Introducing Susan Chardy as Shula, she opens the film by dispassionately discovering her uncle’s body lying by the side of the road within spitting distance of a brothel, disturbing the dirt of fraught family secrets in an award-winning film that does not pull its punches.
