Back for its 67th year, the 2018 Melbourne International Film Festival program has been revealed – and it’s absolutely jam-packed.
This year’s program is bigger than ever, with over 250 feature films, 120 shorts, and 19 VR experiences, the festival will include 27 world premieres and 168 Australian premieres across its 18 days.
For the first time in over ten years, the festival will open at The Regent Theatre with Paul Dano’s Wildlife, and be closed by Sue Thompson’s The Coming Back Out Ball Movie; a love-letter to Australia’s original fighters for queer equality.
There’ll be a massive selection of films direct from Cannes, including South Korean filmmaker Lee Chang-dong’s Burning, which is loosely based on a short story by Haruki Murakami. Pawel Pawlikowski’s Cold War will also be screening, as well as Capharnaüm, by female director Nadine Labaki.
The Australian showcase will feature up-and-coming filmmakers, with a strong focus on Indigenous content. Highlights include Miranda Nation’s psychological thriller Undertow, Nicholas Wrathall’s Undermined: Tales from the Kimberly, and the VR experience Thalu: Dreamtime is Now, directed by Ngarluma man Tyson Morwarin.
Music fans might want to catch the world premiere of Mark Joffe’s documentary Working Class Man, an honest and intimate portrait of Jimmy Barnes, as well as Matangi/Maya/M.I.A. which provides a candid insight into the life of the eclectic musician.
Other categories of note are African Film Rediscovered, which will feature restored films never screened before in Australia, Fashion x Film, specially curated by Artistic Director Michelle Carey, and Italo-Crime, a retrospective on Italian crime thrillers from the 60’s and 70’s.
