"Fearsomely visceral and impeccably performed, it’s a brisk, bracing update, even as it remains exquisitely in period … a Shakespeare pic for the ages." – Variety

MIFF Accelerator alumnus Justin Kurzel’s debut feature, Snowtown, won him the AACTA and Australian Film Critics’ Association awards for Best Director as well as a FIPRESCI Prize at Cannes in 2012. Fresh from premiering his audacious follow-up feature at this year’s Cannes, he brings Macbeth to MIFF for its Australian Premiere in this very special surprise screening.

Starring a brilliantly imposing Michael Fassbender in the title role, with Marion Cotillard extraordinary as Lady Macbeth, Kurzel’s radical adaptation of the Scottish play transforms the Bard’s bloody tale of unchecked ambition into a brutal psychological study of grief and trauma. Shot on location in Scotland, the film’s ominously purgatorial atmosphere is rendered exquisite by Snowtown cinematographer and fellow MIFF Accelerator alumnus Adam Arkapaw (who also lensed Animal Kingdom, as well as TV’s Top of the Lake and True Detective), while The Mess Hall’s Jed Kurzel re-joins his brother (last seen at MIFF in 2013 with his segment of Tim Winton’s The Turning) to provide the evocatively moody score.

"A remarkable movie, a scorched-earth rendering of a classic story … displaying a directorial confidence that is breathtaking and a peerless intelligence in interpretation." – The Playlist