Another acclaimed event bites the dust for 2020.
The Melbourne International Film Festival has earned a global reputation for continuously delivering programs that are diverse, ambitious and limitlessly entertaining. Across 68 years, the occasion has championed the power of film to educate and inspire but in 2020, for the first time in its history, MIFF won’t be going ahead.
The MIFF Board and Management had no other option but to cancel the event in the wake of coronavirus.
“The thought of a winter without MIFF in our city is a disorienting one; deeply disappointing to both our organisation, and I’m sure, our community,” said MIFF Artistic Director Al Cossar.
“It is a decision that was very hard but plainly necessary, responsible and required given what we all face together at this moment. Our thoughts rush to those who make MIFF what it is year after year, and what it will return to be. To our partners, funders, venues, staff, suppliers, filmmakers and artists, volunteers, prized collaborators of all kinds, and our own uniquely MIFF audiences, we wish you safety and support; we will continue, together.”
While MIFF won’t go ahead in 2020, the festival is working towards creating other means to engage its audience with announcements to be made as details become available.
The festival was coming off one of its biggest instalments yet, where it asked the likes of Thurston Moore, Sampa The Great and Nick Cave and Warren Ellis to create reimagined music x film spectaculars.
Other highlights of the program included a 35mm screening of Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, a marathon of Goldblum pictures as well as the Adam Goodes-featuring The Australian Dream.
Keep up to date with any future MIFF announcements via the festival website.
