Comedy Festival Screenings
As part of Melbourne International Comedy Festival’s Funny on Film program, MIFF presents a hilarious on-screen showcase featuring screenings of two recent festival favourites. Join us for some big laughs and iconic performances – perfect for communal viewing in a festival atmosphere.
The Ballad of Wallis Island
Can a rich, eccentric superfan reunite his favourite indie-folk duo? And can they mend his lonely heart?
Chatty oddball Charles believes lightning can strike twice: after all, he bought two lottery tickets and won on both. But five years after his beloved wife’s death, something’s still missing. So Charles lures his favourite band, now-estranged folk duo McGwyer Mortimer, to an extremely lucrative gig on the gorgeous, remote Welsh island where he lives. Charles’s hapless hosting and effusive fandom, however, only remind Herb McGwyer how far he is from the solo stardom he craves – and, more awkwardly, his ex-bandmate and old flame, Nell Mortimer, has brought her American husband along. As past yearnings and grievances reverberate, one question resounds: will the magic of music reignite the passion that first brought them together?
It’s second time lucky for UK comedy veterans Tim Key and Tom Basden, who – together with director James Griffiths – return to the premise of a 2007 short film they wrote and starred in, this time joined by three-time Oscar nominee Carey Mulligan. Featuring Basden’s original songs and Key’s dryly funny wordplay, The Ballad of Wallis Island will appeal to fans of Juliet, Naked (MIFF 2018), The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent and Once (MIFF 2007). Resisting romantic clichés and full of comic charm, this is a wise and subtle meditation on the limits of music’s emotional power.
“Has a ton of heart, a generosity of spirit and an ultimately disarming sweetness that make the film sneak up on you, cynicism be damned.” – The Hollywood Reporter
Tuesday 31 March, 7pm
ACMI, Fed Square
Sunlight
Comedian Nina Conti makes her directorial debut with this darkly funny joy ride featuring a monkey, a radio host brought back from the brink and a dead man’s watch.
Ready to end his life in a dingy motel room, radio presenter Roy is serendipitously interrupted by Jane, who is on a mission to escape the stronghold of her abusive stepfather, the motel’s owner. When Roy wakes to find himself speeding down a highway in his van, driven by Jane – dressed in the garb of her confident alter ego, Monkey, which she refuses to take off – he finds himself going along for the ride. Buoyed by Monkey’s bold vision to start a new life, the pair hatch a plan to dig up his father’s dead body. An unlikely partnership forms: Monkey finds a path to freedom and Roy discovers a lifeline.
At once bleakly funny, tender and profound, Sunlight is the first narrative feature from award-winning, critically acclaimed comedian and ventriloquist Conti. Comedian Shenoah Allen co-wrote the film with real-life partner Conti, and their on-screen chemistry as Roy and Jane is affectingly palpable. With its upbeat soundtrack and the sprawling desert landscape of New Mexico, Sunlight is an offbeat road movie that doubles as an unconventional love story – one that’s sure to provoke belly laughs, melancholy and a heartwarming afterglow.
Tuesday 7 April, 7pm
ACMI, Fed Square