The MIFF 60th Retrospective presents a selection of 10 significant and magnificent films from the past six decades of MIFF’s life. Featuring early and remarkable works from some of the Festival’s most beloved filmmakers, these movies paint a portrait of 60 incredible years of Festival life, as we look forward to another 60 more.

	THE APPLE (Iran, 85 min) "Potent symbolism linked to a bizarre story rooted in fact, set in Iran and laden with political, social and generational overtones." - New York Times A truly remarkable achievement, The Apple (MIFF 1999) was directed by Samira Makhmalbaf at the age of 17 using leftover film stock from her father's (filmmaker Mohsen Makhmalbaf) previous production. Upon its release in 1998 it won multiple festival awards and helped shine a light on a remarkable true story, acted out by the actual family at the centre of the controversy. More >
	AN AUTUMN AFTERNOON (G) (Japan, 112 min) "In its exquisite refinement of Ozu's style and themes, and its general air of nostalgia and loss, An Autumn Afternoon does in fact feel like a summation of his career." - Criterion Hirayama (Ozu regular Chishu Ryu), an aging widower living with his two grown children, is forced to consider marrying off his daughter before she falls into a life of spinsterhood in Yasujiro Ozu's 1962 classic, An Autumn Afternoon. With a family bond that edges toward a deep co-dependence, the notion of separation strikes Hirayama as simply another death in the family. More >
	BARKING DOGS NEVER BITE (M) (South Korea, 106 min) "Beautifully directed, unsentimental and darkly funny." - Time Out London Bong Joon-ho (Mother, MIFF 2009; The Host, MIFF 2006), a true creative and commercial giant of South Korean cinema, made his feature debut with the bloody-slapstick-meets-romantic-comedy Barking Dogs Never Bite (MIFF 2001). More >
	BEAUTY AND THE BEAST (PG) (France, 96 min) "Art produces ugly things which frequently become more beautiful with time." - Jean Cocteau Screening at the very first MIFF in 1952, Beauty and the Beast comes from one of the finest exponents of the avant-garde that France has ever seen, the prodigiously talented Jean Cocteau. It is a marvel of filmmaking, a surrealist masterwork that revels in the possibilities opened up by the moving image. More >
	CLASS RELATIONS (West Germany/France, 127 min) The existential dilemma of Kafka's Amerika re-imagined as an insight into class struggle. The dark and poetic visions of Czech writer and unlikely national hero Franz Kafka have often lent themselves to screen adaptations, but filmmakers Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet's take on Amerika remains one of the most faithful to Kafka's frustrating existential battle. More >
	THE DEVIL'S PLAYGROUND (M) (Australia, 107 min) "The people in Fred Schepisi's The Devil's Playground are like sculpted figures that glow with their own light." - New Yorker The Devil's Playground revolves around Tom Allen, a 13-year-old boy growing up in the rigorous confines of a 1950s Catholic seminary and torn between the demands of the priesthood and his own burgeoning sexuality. More >
	FRUIT OF PARADISE (Czechoslovakia, 99 min) "An entrancing hippie-dippie oratorio on gender combat that doesn't retell Genesis so much as slip it a microdot." - Village Voice There have been few filmmakers as willing to completely carve apart the conventions of cinema as Czech pioneer of the feminist avant-garde Vera Chytilová (Daisies), and of all her films, perhaps the most inventive was Fruit of Paradise (MIFF 1971), her explosive 1970 re-imagining of the Eden myth. More >
	GUMMO (USA, 89 min) "No conceivable competition will match the sourness, cynicism and pretension of Mr. Korine's debut feature." - New York Times From the controversy and brutal honesty of Kids to the freak-show delinquency of Trash Humpers (MIFF 2010), writer and filmmaker Harmony Korine has never been one to toe the creative line, forever pushing the envelope of what's acceptable in cinema. This has never been so perfectly realised as it was in his 1997 small-town suburban nightmare Gummo (MIFF 1998), his directorial debut. More >
	HAPPY TOGETHER (M) (Hong Kong, 96 min) Garnering high praise and multiple festival awards upon its release in 1997, Happy Together (MIFF 1997) instantly became a cult classic for filmmaker Wong Kar-wai. After his melancholic epic Ashes of Time and the upbeat and frenetic Chungking Express, Wong emerged into an altogether different style of film that offers less focus on the gay element of its two protagonists than it does on the pains of love found and lost. More >
	THE KING OF COMEDY (PG) (USA, 109 min) "Creepiest movie of the year in every sense, and one of the best." - Time Out London The fifth collaboration between Robert De Niro and Martin Scorsese, The King of Comedy (MIFF 1983) was underappreciated upon its release, but stands up as a forgotten classic, featuring virtuoso performances not only from De Niro, but also a disturbed Sandra Bernhard and an enraged Jerry Lewis at the top of his game. More >