Liminal’s Picks for MIFF 2023
Founded in 2016, Liminal is an anti-racist platform that supports talented writers and artists in Australia and beyond, with a focus on the Asian Australian experience.
Publishing art, writing and interviews, it also runs literary events, mentorships, fellowships and national literary prizes for First Nations writers and writers of colour, working to create new spaces and opportunities for the community.
With MIFF 2023 well and truly into its first week, the Liminal team tell us what films they’re keen to see at this year’s festival.
Above and Header: Inside the Yellow Cocoon Shell
At the top of Liminal’s list is, by far, Inside the Yellow Cocoon Shell, Phạm Thiên Ân’s Bright Horizons–competing feature-length debut. Blending the oneiric musings that typify the works of Apichatpong Weerasethakul and the patient compositions of Tsai Ming-liang, this film is, at heart, a personal odyssey: one that pits questions about existence, spirituality and fate with an unmooring confrontation with the self. Set against the largely under-seen rural landscapes of Vietnam, and having won the famed Caméra d’Or at Cannes, this sumptuously visualised masterpiece will leave a haunting impression.
Don’t miss the Liminal co-presented post-film Q&A on Wednesday 16 August!
Tiger Stripes
Coming-of-age films are a dime a dozen, but it’s rare for the processes of physiological and psychological change to be depicted in literal fashion – as is the case in Tiger Stripes. Amanda Nell Eu’s Cannes Critics’ Week Grand Prize winner takes the notion of transformation and runs full throttle with it, channelling the director’s own negative experiences of growing up into a fable about the ways in which isolation and repression can make us feel monstrous. Capped off with a feisty protagonist who snubs her nose at punitive conservatism, this Malaysian body horror is sure to be a beast to reckon with.
No Bears
Iranian auteur Jafar Panahi returns with another deftly elliptical polemic, this time contemplating the significance of boundary lines: those between nation-states, those demarcating ethics and the law, those that define what we are (and aren’t) personally willing to transgress. In No Bears, Panahi proves once again that constraint is the mother of invention, mining pathos and critique from what may seem a simple premise.
Sand
The adage that those who don’t heed history’s warnings are doomed to repeat it is brought to the fore in Sand, a Sri Lankan drama that homes in on the residual tensions between the Sinhalese majority and the Tamil minority following the 1983–2009 civil war. With compassion and heart-wrenching authenticity, director Visakesa Chandrasekaram – also a human rights lawyer and academic – weaves a tale that recounts not just the still-healing wounds of a divided nation, but also one man’s search for purpose and peace.
Cobweb
Would it really be a film festival without at least one film about the dubious machinations of screen production? In Cobweb, Parasite star Song Kang-ho plays a harried director trying and failing to get his magnum opus made; his project seems to be riddled with every hurdle imaginable – actors’ egos, producers’ ineptitude, overzealous censors nipping the film in the bud before it’s even bloomed. Meticulously crafted with 1970s period detail along with a rollicking score, this is a meta comedy that unmasks the mess behind the silver screen.
Shortcomings
From one story of egos to another – in Shortcomings, an aspiring Japanese American filmmaker with an undeniable chip on his shoulder revels in blaming everyone except himself for his series of misfortunes. Cleverly satirising the sometimes-overly-pretentious worlds of cinema and art, actor turned director Randall Park (of Fresh off the Boat, Always Be My Maybe and now MCU fame) provokes laughs and knowing critique in equal measure – a feat ably bolstered by the film’s impressive cast that includes Justin H. Min, Sherry Cola, Debby Ryan and Tavi Gevinson (plus Stephanie Hsu in cameo).
Bonus recommendations: The Breaking Ice, one of two MIFF 2023 films from Ilo Ilo (MIFF 2013) director Anthony Chen; Monster, the Cannes Queer Palm–winning latest from Hirokazu Kore-eda; and Shayda, Noora Niasari’s moving portrait of an Iranian mother and daughter seeking a new life in Australia.