#MIFF2018 returns 2-19 August 2018 in character-filled theatres state-of-the-art cinemas and other spaces in the Melbourne CBD. The Melbourne International Film Festival hosts a feast of cinematic delicacies from over 50 countries for seventeen days each winter heavily garnished with a range of parties and special events. MIFF showcases the best in current cinema from around the world as well as retrospectives tributes and discussion programs. Since its inception MIFF has also been committed to local film: it is Australia's largest showcase of new Australian cinema and is the country's most vocal champion of emerging and established local filmmaking talent. The festival also hosts many celebratory world premieres of local films. Full Program Tickets & Passes Join & Support Festival Info Special Events Talks and Masterclasses Recommendations facebook.com/MelbIntFilmFest

Melbourne International Film Festival 2018

THE Melbourne International Film Festival will host the world premiere of the JIMMY BARNES documentary Working Class Boy. Featuring Barnes' Cold Chisel bandmates DON WALKER and IAN MOSS, as well as son DAVID CAMPBELL, the film follows the legendary Aussie rocker back to his childhood home in South Australia and to the house in Scotland where he was born on the kitchen floor. Barnes (top right) has admitted revisiting certain points in his life for the doco was “like looking at a nightmare” . The MIFF 2018 program was announced yesterday, with DAMIAN CALLINAN's Comedy Festival show-turned-movie The Merger — about a footy star who returns home to save his local club with the help of refugees — filling the Centrepiece Gala slot. Screening at Melbourne Planetarium, Carriberrie documents the history of indigenous song and dance with DAVID GULPILIL, JACK CHARLES and the Bangarra dance theatre group. RADHA MITCHELL is likely to return home for MIFF to share her film, Celeste, an atmospheric drama costarring NADINE GARNER, while ROSE BYRNE and CHRIS O'DOWD play a couple upended by the arrival of a rock star, played by ETHAN HAWKE, in the rom-com adaptation of NICK HORNBY'S Juliet, Naked. NEALA JOHNSON | heraldsun.com.au

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MIFF: The Full 2018 Program Revealed

The Melbourne International Film Festival is once again upon us. In partnership with MIFF, we take a look at some highlights from this year's program. For eighteen days in August, MIFF is once again a film lover's Christmas. Running August 2-19 at cinemas all over the Melbourne CBD, here's a quick look at some highlights of the 2018 program. The opening night film is a promising one: American actor-turned-director Paul Dano's debut film Wildlife, starring Carey Mulligan, Jake Gyllenhaal and Australian teenager Ed Oxenbould, charts the collapse of a 1960s American family. It received great reviews at the recent Cannes, and it's good to see Oxenbould getting a foothold on the world stage. Japanese master Hirokazu Kore-eda brings two new films, including his Palme d'Or winning Shoplifters. Ever controversial Argentinian Gaspar Noé (Love, Enter the Void) documents a bad trip in Climax; Iranian director Asghar Farhadi (Salesman, A Separation) relocates to Spain to reunite Penelope Cruz and Javier Bardem in Everybody Knows; and you won't want to miss Scottish auteur Lynne Ramsay's long-awaited thriller You Were Never Really Here, starring Joaquin Phoenix. Australians will also get their first chance to see Terry Gilliam's The Man Who Killed Don Quixote, which first went into production twenty years ago. Better be good, Terry. Australian comedy The Merger is being presented at a special gala event. Comedian Damian Callinan directs and stars in this film about an ex-AFL legend who trains up refugees to play in the local footy team. It's the kind of underdog stories Australians have been making since The Castle, and it looks genuinely funny. Looking beyond the big hitters, there's a triumphant return from Crystal Moselle, director of The Wolfpack. Skate Kitchen delves into the world of teen female skaters, casting real skate kids and bringing her documentary sensibility to a narrative film. As ever, Australian film is well represented. The debut from Melbourne filmmaker Alena Lodkina Strange Colours is an eerie, mesmerising trip to the opal mines of outback New South Wales; Acute Misfortune tells the story of the time journalist Erik Jensen spent with artist Adam Cullen, and is based on Jensen's award-winning book; and 1929 silent Melbourne crime caper The Cheaters has been painstakingly restored. On the documentary front, there are some fascinating explorations of the weird and extreme times we live in. Encounter Syrian extremism in Of Fathers and Sons; the surprising movement of people who think the earth is flat in Behind the Curve; a look inside the Melbourne independent music community in Now Sound: Melbourne's Listening; and the virtual relationships of China's live-streaming culture in People's Republic of Desire. Looking at the past, Three Identical Strangers tells the bizarre tale of triplets separated at birth for extremely unethical research purposes, and there's a new take on the mother and daughter stars of cult classic Grey Gardens in That Summer. The highlight of the Music on Film strand is Nico, 1988, a dramatised look at this uncompromising songwriter and performer in the last months of her life. Other musical outsiders are profiled in some fascinating documentaries, including comic performance artist Frank Sidebottom Being Frank: The Chris Sievey Story and the fans who take their obsessions with One Direction and Backstreet Boys very, very seriously I Used to Be Normal: A Boyband Fangirl Story. This year's festival ends on a joyful note with The Coming Back Out Ball. The closing night movie is a documentary of Melbourne's LGBTQI elders telling their story and celebrating their lives against the backdrop of the same-sex plebiscite. There's plenty more. It's the only time of year you can see a psychedelic spaghetti western get a standing ovation from a packed theatre, then run across town to catch a documentary about asylum seekers. Here's to another two weeks of cinematic binging. The Melbourne International Film Festival runs August 2-19. Source Published on 10 July 2018 by WILL COX | broadsheet.com.au