Michelle Carey

Artistic Director

It’s about time. I’ve been thinking a lot about time lately. The time that makes me happiest: time passed in the cinema. We invite you to invest in time this festival. Whether you are taking two weeks off from work or devoting time to an extra long cinema session, make the time for MIFF and you will be rewarded.  

Some of our greatest living filmmakers – Jacques Rivette, Lav Diaz, Frederick Wiseman and Richard Linklater – understand the power of duration and the passage of time, using it to inform their stories in different and equally extraordinary ways. You can see their films at this year’s festival.

What other ways should you spend your time this MIFF? Don’t leave your brain at home for our focus on science and technology, I Dream of Genius; marvel at the issues facing a dynamic and rapidly shifting country with India in Flux; be spooked by the Cantonese capriciousness of yesteryear in Haunted Hong Kong; and luxuriate in what’s to come in TV with Big Scene, Small Screen. For something lighter, don’t miss the best and most hilarious of the Commedia all’italia. As we move into an almost entirely digital realm, we celebrate those who still choose to shoot on film, in Celluloid Dreams, and we profile the charismatic French actor, Jean-Pierre Léaud.

MIFF is also here to bring you the best in new Australian cinema, including a trifecta Opening, Closing and Centrepiece of homegrown films. And be sure to bring the younger ones out for the first MIFF Kids' Gala.

Time of the more compact variety can be enjoyed during our Shorts weekend, across the middle section of the festival, where ten curated compilations of short programs will screen, including the 11th year of Accelerator, culminating in the Shorts Awards.

And this year we welcome two new initiatives: the Critics Campus, where eight emerging film critics will be mentored and thrust into the groove of covering a film festival, and the MIFF Premiere Showcase, going out to Victorian regions after the festival ends.

Last but most fundamentally, MIFF-goers will notice a broader festival footprint across the city as we take on new venues.

Enjoy discovering all that MIFF 2014 offers.

 

Geoffrey Rush

MIFF Patron

Dear loyal or newby widescreen worshippers!

From the get-go people have snuck into vaudeville houses and nickelodeon arcades, seduced by crazy dreams of altered realities, to see lantern slides and pictures that were tinted, finally moved, then spoke, became colourful, forgot the square and got wider and bigger, Dolbyed and digitised, 3D’d and 6K’d …

Now, with double-thumbed dexterity on remotes and keyboards we skim and taste-menu this century-old medium on domestic plasmas, desktops, tablets, smartphones, on planes, in hotels on demand, at the gym, in the backseat of a car or through the shameful thievery of illegal downloads.

So welcome to your MIFF showcase of second-decade 21st century world movies – where they belong: on the big screens surrounded by your tribe in a full house, where in a drama the communal silence is deeper; in a thriller the gasps can be collective; in a comedy the yuks are bigger.

This is MIFF: classical, discriminating, encyclopaedic, musical, factual … where you may join in or feel at odds with everyone else watching the shadows on the screen. Have a dialogue with yourself in the company of thousands of others – MIFF is truly a metropolitan, pan-hemispheric festival!

Festival Program
250 feature films and 96 short films were screened from 31 July to 17 August

Full Program

Opening Night Film
Predestination (Michael and Peter Spierig, 2014)

Image Gallery

Films

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BLACK COAL, THIN ICE

Bai Ri Yan Huo
Director Diao Yinan
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FISH & CAT

Mahi va Gorbeh
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FREE RANGE / BALLAD ON THE APPROVING OF WORLD

Free Range / Ballaad maailma heakskiitmisest
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GIOVANNI'S ISLAND

Giovanni no Shima
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HUMAN CAPITAL

Il Capitale Humano
Director Paolo Virzi
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IF YOU DON'T, I WILL

Arrête ou je continue
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In August

En Août
Director Jenna Hasse
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JOY OF MAN'S DESIRING

Que ta joie demeure
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LI'L QUINQUIN

P'tit Quinquin
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LIFE OF RILEY

Aimer, boire et chanter
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Sourdough

Lievito madre
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THE KIDNAPPING OF MICHEL HOUELLEBECQ

L'enlèvement de Michel Houellebecq
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THE PRINCESS OF FRANCE

La Princesa de Francia
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WHEN ANIMALS DREAM

Når dyrene drømmer
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WHITE GOD

Fehér Isten
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Yes We Love

Ja vi elsker
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From the Festival Files

You Had to Be There

The thrill of the festival happens in a moment. In the shared moments created in being present at the festival, and in sharing experiences with others in the MIFF community. These moments are the instances that set the festival apart from the everyday, that remind us that we live in the present, and that some experiences are just too unique to replicate. … Each year, we return to the festival to …

On Screen and in the Cinema

The magic of the festival is reached through its screens. These are places and spaces that captivate our attention, providing windows where films come to life before our eyes. As portals to the world, the festival’s screens allow us to travel the globe, move through time, and see through another’s eyes. … Yet these screens also remind us of home. They are fixed in place, in our memories and in o …