Bright Horizons
MIFF’s film competition, Bright Horizons, recognises the new, the next, the breakthrough and the best, with an extraordinary international line-up of first- and second-time filmmakers competing for the Bright Horizons Award presented by VicScreen – one of the richest film prizes in the world.
A cash prize valued at A$140,000, the Bright Horizons Award is deliberated on by an esteemed international jury, this year led by Jury President Ivan Sen and including David Lowery, Deborah L. Scott, Yulia Evina Bhara and Jillian Nguyen. Read more about the jury here.
Explore this strand with a Bright Horizons 3-Pass!
Flow
A menagerie adrift on a boat must work together to survive a catastrophic flood in this animated wonder arriving from Cannes Un Certain Regard.
Good One
A simple camping trip evolves into a life-changing experience in this sensitively told coming-of-age debut.
Hoard
The past comes knocking in this four-time Venice-winning feature debut that blends grief, grime, love and childhood trauma.
Inside
Guy Pearce stars in this prison-set portrait of incarceration and salvation – the feature debut from Short Film Palme d’Or winner Charles Williams.
Janet Planet
Pulitzer-winning playwright Annie Baker’s debut film is a sublime mother–daughter coming-of-ager that pays extraordinary attention to the ordinary.
Julie Keeps Quiet
When her coach is accused of misconduct, a tennis prodigy decides – for her own complex reasons – not to return serve.
On Becoming a Guinea Fowl
With absurdist humour and playful surrealism, this disarmingly funny Cannes award-winner rages at a middle-class Zambian family’s shameful silence.
Sweet Dreams
The desperate absurdities of colonisation are laid bare in this satire of a Dutch family’s fallout following the death of their wealthy patriarch.
Universal Language
This zany transformation of Canada’s beigest city into the site of a classic Iranian film won Cannes Directors’ Fortnight’s first ever Audience Award.
The Village Next to Paradise
Hope and familial bonds thrive in dangerous conditions in this groundbreaking feature – the first ever Somali film to screen at Cannes.