Two decades since Adam Elliott won an Academy Award for his stop-motion short Harvie Krumpet, the animator is back with a new film.
Starring the voice of award-winning Australian actor Sarah Snook, Memoir of a Snail will premiere in Australia on the Melbourne International Film Festival's opening night in August.
The film has been eight years in the making and is billed as Elliott's most ambitious yet.
The filmmaker said he and producer Liz Kearney were thrilled to open the festival.
"About Melbourne, made by Melburnians and voiced by Melburnians, Memoir of a Snail is a handmade stop-motion film lovingly crafted by a team of local artists," Elliott said in a statement.
It also features voiceovers by Kodi Smit-McPhee, Magda Szubanski, Eric Bana, Tony Armstrong, Nick Cave and Jacki Weaver.
The festival slate also features another Melbourne film many years in the making, coming-of-age skating documentary Queens of Concrete.
It follows three top notch skaters who aim for selection in Australia's first Olympic skateboarding team: Ava Godfrey, 13, the daughter of a pro skater, Charlotte Heath, 9, who is desperate to prove she is competitive internationally, and Hayley Wilson, 14, a pioneering street skater from country Victoria.
Shot over seven years from 2016, Queens of Concrete started as a film about female athletes in a male-dominated sport, but went on to become much more than that, said director Eliza Cox.
"It's a window into the harsh realities of growing up and all those heartbreaks and first loves and tragedies, that shape us as we become adults," she told AAP.
Much of the filming took place in Melbourne, but the documentary also follows the skaters as they travel to London, Paris and Tokyo to compete.
A former skater herself growing up in Avoca Beach, NSW, Cox became close to her subjects and had to balance her role as a filmmaker telling a story, with wanting the best for the three girls.
"The girls have been so open to having me and the crew around for so long, really courageous - it hasn't been an easy seven or eight years for them by any means," she said.
Other Australian films on the bill include Magic Beach, an animation that brings to life the book by much-loved children's author Alison Lester.
Nitram director Justin Kurzel also presents a film about musician Warren Ellis of The Bad Seeds, and his personal project to establish an animal sanctuary in Sumatra.
International fare includes pop culture-filled outsider tale I Saw the TV Glow from director Jane Schoenbrun, which includes appearances by Phoebe Bridgers, Snail Mail and Fred Durst.
From recent winner of the Cannes Critics' Week prize Constance Tsang, there's Blue Sun Palace that investigates the complexity of migration through a tale of Chinese workers in New York City.
Dan Stevens stars in in Cuckoo, a spin on horror from German writer-director Tilman Singer.
The festival's full program will be released July 11, and the event runs August 8-25.
