With a world of tense thrillers, darkly-witty comedies, compelling documentaries and undefinable cinematic discoveries, The Melbourne International Film Festival (MIFF) has always managed to maintain a carefully-curated and exciting roster of films in its capacity as one of the most notable screen events in Australia.
The festival will present big award winners from this year’s Cannes, including the 2017 Palme d’Or winning The Square, an imaginative satirical drama from Swedish director Ruben Öslund (Force Majeure) about the utter chaos a curator causes during the conversion of Stockholm Palace into an art museum; Loveless, the 2017 Cannes Jury Prize winner that portrays a marriage in the state of collapse from respected Russian filmmaker Andrey Zvyagintsev (The Return, Leviathan); and the winner of this year’s Cannes Grand Jury Prize and Queer Palm award BPM, a deep exploration into the passions, protests and politics of ‘90s AIDS activism from French director Robin Campillo (Eastern Boys, They Came Back).
Other highlights will include Yorgos Lanthimos’ The Killing of a Sacred Deer, where Colin Farrell and Nicole Kidman star in a darkly comic reimagining of an ancient Greek morality play; Todd Haynes (Velvet Goldmine, Far From Heaven) reunites with Julianne Moore in an adaptation of writer and illustrator Brian Selznick’s Wonderstruck; the thrilling crime-heist Good Time starring Robert Pattinson and Jennifer Jason Leigh; Brigsby Bear, a twisted comedy about a kidnapped man whose favourite cartoon character may never have existed; and Faith Akin’s In the Fade, where Diane Kruger delivers a Best Actress-winning performance as a mother dealing with the aftermath a horrible neo-Nazi hate crime.
The full program will be announced on Tuesday 11 July.
