Will the new players cope with pre-season training whilst fasting for Ramadan? With themes as far apart as refugee migration and footy change rooms, Damian Callinan’s The Merger surprises on a range of levels. That one man alone on stage…
Movement of peoples, social tensions and the power of a good love story still holds our national attention as flashpoint tales of humanity. These are made visible on the stage in an invigorating, dynamic production, the newest version of the…
Following on from sell out performances of The Force Awakens last December and A New Hope in February, the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra is ‘in Concert’ again, this time with Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back. Over 100 musicians play the well…
It’s that time of year again when cinema lovers, and fans of Japanese culture get together for the Japanese Film Festival (JFF). Presented by The Japan Foundation, JFF is now one of the largest celebrations of Japanese films in the…
We’re enormous fans of Underground Cinema — aka UGC — at The Plus Ones. UGC has honed the art of tease and surprise. With the intension of “Taking cinema out of the cinema” the UGC crew screen films in secret locations…
Presented by Palace Cinemas, the Cine Latino Film Festival is back once again to showcase the sights and sounds emerging from Latin America. Running from 13-28 November in Melbourne, the Festival will feature 26 films including a spotlight on new…
If you value films from other countries full of vigour, pathos, and human drama, high class documentaries that explore home culture taboos, want to learn about key movers and shakers the world over, cultural luminaries, and untold stories which surprise,…
Difficult to describe, a pleasure to watch. Sometimes, a movie requires patience. Watching Georgian director Anna Urushadze’s Scary Mother, I kept trying to pinpoint the film’s genre. I would think it was a drama about a stifling marriage, until it…
Tells the stories that need to be told Storytelling plays a crucial role in Transit, a film about displacement during wartime, directed by Christian Petzold and adapted from Anna Segher’s novel. There’s a scene in which Georg (Franz Rogowski), a…
The most intense bonds are often the most unstable The best movies tell only the stories they need to tell, with only the resources they need. Directed by Debra Granik, Leave No Trace is perfectly minimal. Based on Peter Rock’s…