There’s a certain feeling that washes over Melbourne as August rolls around. The city’s trams, cinemas, and laneways start to buzz with a different kind of energy: the glorious, cinephile-fueled excitement of the Melbourne International Film Festival. As one of…
It’s that time of the year again when cinema lovers of Melbourne brave the arctic weather for a nice big glass of red wine and some truly excellent cinema. Celebrating a monumental 70th program this year overflowing with showcases, buzz-worthy international…
Confidence in anything during a pandemic is no mean feat. After setting the benchmark in 2020 with the online-only MIFF 68 1/2, MIFF (Melbourne International Film Festival), our beloved MIFF is back streaming into homes across the country. The only uncertainty is…
It’s that time of the year again when cinema lovers of Melbourne brave the arctic weather for a nice big glass of red wine and some truly excellent cinema. Running continuously since 1952, MIFF is the leading film festival in…
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…
Swedish film The Square is making its Australian debut at Melbourne’s most wonderful film festival, MIFF. After taking out the 2017 Cannes Palm d’Or, my fellow movie-watching crew and I had high hopes for filmmaker Ruben Östlund’s unusual and inventive…
The Wound is the directorial debut from filmmaker John Trengove that has been receiving some hot debate about its controversial look at the clash of tradition and modernity in South Africa. On a chilly Melbourne evening we made our way…
Homoerotic, kinky bondage, and Catholic parables do not usually fit within the same sentence, that’s why we were so intrigued to see one of this year’s most unconventional films at MIFF – The Ornithologist. This Portuguese film from 2016 stars…