The Melbourne international film festival returns with a beefy line-up this year, just like the ol’ days pre-pandemic. Running in cinemas from 4 to 21 August, and online 11 to 28 August, the festival’s 70th edition includes 371 films – including 18 feature film world premieres and 112 feature film Australian premieres.
As usual, cinephiles have been pampered with selections plucked from all over the world. Here are 10 titles to put on your radar.
1. The Stranger
Director: Thomas M Wright
Country: Australia
With his brilliant Adam Cullen biopic Acute Misfortune, Wright achieved an Australian feature film directorial debut up there with the best so far this century, alongside Jennifer Kent’s The Babadook and Justin Kurzel’s Snowtown. Joel Edgerton must have been watching, because he produces and stars alongside Sean Harris in Wright’s follow-up: a fictionalised portrait of an undercover case surrounding the real-life 2003 disappearance of 13-year-old Daniel Morcombe. Expect a gritty, twisty and unconventional crime drama.
2. Three Thousand Years of Longing
Director: George Miller
Country: Australia/US
The marketing materials for Three Thousand Years of Longing go heavy with a “from the mad genius of George Miller” message. In the oeuvre of the legendary Australian director, the film – about an academic (Tilda Swinton) who discovers an ancient bottle containing a wish-granting genie (Idris Elba) – arrives between the beloved Mad Max: Fury Road and its upcoming prequel Furiosa. What will Swinton wish for, and will she wish for more wishes? A classic conundrum.
3. Call Jane
Director: Phyllis Nagy
Country: US
The overturning of Roe v Wade has provided an extra layer of relevance and topicality to this 60s-set drama from Nagy (the screenwriter of Carol) about an underground network that provided safe abortions when they were (first) illegal throughout the US. The narrative unfolds from the perspective of fictitious protagonist Joy (Elizabeth Banks), a housewife whose pregnancy has medical complications that put her life at risk. Joy encounters the “Janes”: an abortion network led by Virginia (Sigourney Weaver), and becomes an activist herself.
4. Crimes of the Future
Director: David Cronenberg
Country: Canada/France/Greece/UK
In the field of body horror, nobody is more accomplished than Cronenberg, whose classics of the genre (including The Fly, Scanners and Videodrome) have a terrible, clinging quality; they stick to you like parasites. His return to the land of icky-mucky-yucky is set in a future where the human body is undergoing big changes. Pain is a thing of the past (that’s good!), pleasure is also on the way out (that’s bad … ) and people are growing new organs (that’s … weird). Viggo Mortensen plays a performance artist who incorporates his body’s rapidly expanding organ set into his art; one assumes Mike Parr would be a fan.
5. De Humani Corporis Fabrica
Directors: Véréna Paravel and Lucien Castaing-Taylor
Country: France/Switzerland
Continuing the icky-mucky-yucky theme, Paravel and Castaing-Taylor’s documentary goes way, way inside the human body, using cameras attached to surgical tools to vividly capture our insides, from blood vessels to the brain. They challenge traditional conceptions of art by finding aesthetics written into the patterns of nature – a concept reminiscent of the ABC’s excellent short-form series Phenomena. Reportage covering the film, which premiered at this year’s Cannes film festival, has delivered a clear warning: audiences need to have very strong stomachs.
6. Franklin
Director: Kasimir Burgess
Country: Australia
When was the last time you read a piece of political commentary on Australia’s climate election that credited activists? Probably never. But activism matters, as Burgess’s new documentary reminds us. Narrated by Hugo Weaving, with interviewees including the former Greens leader Bob Brown, this film details the great length activists undertook to protect Tasmania’s stunning Franklin River, pulling off a hard-fought and highly effective campaign.
7. Playground
Director: Laura Wandel
Country: Belgium
Capturing the horrors of the first day at school from a child’s perspective, the cameras in Wandel’s film remain at the height of its youngsters, visually rooting us in the perspective of characters including seven-year-old protagonist Nora (Maya Vanderbeque). Struggling to make friends and observing the bullying of her older brother Abel (Günter Duret), Nora has an intensely awful experience, the film treating the playground as a microcosm for aspects of wider society. Critics are smitten, calling it “remarkable”, “heartbreaking”, “perfectly formed”, “stunning” and “jaw-dropping”.
8. On The Morning You Wake (To the End of the World)
Directors: Dr Jamaica Heolimeleikalani Osorio, Mike Brett, Steve Jamison, Arnaud Colinart, Pierre Zandrowicz
Country: France/US/UK
The transition from tethered (connected to computer by cable) to standalone virtual reality headsets, such as the Meta Quest 2, has dramatically reduced the quality of graphics inside VR experiences. That’s certainly evident in this 38-minute VR documentary which contains environments that look as though they were generated on gaming consoles 20 years ago. Nevertheless, striking moments of visual aplomb are created when the creators abandon fidelity to realism in favour of a more surreal aesthetic. The story is also fascinating, recounting a day in 2018 when, at the peak of tensions between Donald Trump and North Korea, residents of Hawaii were sent an erroneous emergency notification on their phones advising them that a nuclear missile was headed towards them.
9. Melbourne on film retrospective screenings
To celebrate the festival’s 70th anniversary, this year’s program includes a collection of films shot in Melbourne, combining features and shorts, many rarely screened in cinemas. This impressive line-up includes Love and Other Catastrophes, Ghosts … of the Civil Dead, Head On, Noise, Pure Shit, Death in Brunswick, Dogs in Space, The Club and the world’s first feature-length film: The Story of the Kelly Gang.
10 Moonage Daydream
Director: Brett Morgen
Country: US/Germany
The first film sanctioned by David Bowie’s estate, Moonage Daydream draws from five decades of material from the late and great musician, including never-before-seen footage and remastered songs. M’colleague Peter Bradshaw’s excitable five-star review described it as a “140-minute shapeshifting epiphany-slash-freakout leading to the revelation that, yes, we’re lovers of David Bowie and that is that”. Sold!
Melbourne international film festival 2022 runs 4-21 August, in venues across the city and regional Victoria; and online 11-28 August. Tickets sales open today for Miff members, and will open to the general public on 15 July
