Accelerator Shorts 2
Short films by emerging filmmakers from Australia participating in the MIFF Accelerator Lab 2021. See the work of tomorrow’s hottest directors today.
Australian Shorts
Bodies in Motion
Celts
This complex, evocative period piece about human disconnection invites you to a party in 1990s Belgrade – Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles costume optional.
Cryptozoo
Dear Comrades!
A Soviet official finds her loyalty to the regime tested when her daughter goes missing in the aftermath of a massacre.
Documentary Shorts
Experimental Shorts
Freedom Swimmer
Olivia Martin McGuire parallels a grandfather’s journey to safety during the Cultural Revolution with his granddaughter’s fight for freedom in Hong Kong today.
Happy Valley
Shot on cold-hued 16mm, this mournful, restless ode to Hong Kong sketches the city’s fragile present and indefinite future.
Hating Peter Tatchell
Presented by Sir Ian McKellen and co–executive-produced by Elton John, this unflinching portrait reveals a human rights activist at once revered and notorious.
The I and S of Lives
Kevin Jerome Everson’s camera dances with a rollerskater in this mesmerising exercise in fluidity and embeddedness.
The Inheritance
A collective springs to life in this radiant tribute to radical Black politics.
Ithaka
The campaign to free Julian Assange takes on intimate dimensions in this documentary portrait of an elderly man’s fight to save his son.
Jeanette Is the Dog
Melbourne has never looked sleeker than in this low-key mumblecore piece.
Maat Means Land
Poised at the intersection of activism and art, wunderkind Fox Maxy’s TikTok-esque tapestry documents the injustice and legacy of colonisation.
MIFF Centrepiece Gala - Summer of Soul (...or, When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised)
The “Black Woodstock” of 1969, which was filmed but never seen, finally makes it to the big screen in this Sundance US Documentary Grand Jury Prize winner.
The Monopoly of Violence
This timely, intelligent and emotional examination of state-sanctioned violence reveals a disturbingly universal story.
Multiply
A 2020 large-scale participatory-dance work choreographed by the acclaimed Stephanie Lake expresses the inexpressible in lockdown.
My Name Is Pauli Murray
Before Thurgood Marshall, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Rosa Parks, there was Pauli Murray. Remember their name.
New Order
Winner of the Silver Lion at the 2020 Venice Film Festival, this shocking, dystopian thriller is an incendiary indictment of class, racism and power that speaks to our times.
The Ninth Tower
When the Victorian Government locks down his public-housing building, a teenager responsible for his mother’s welfare is pushed to the brink.
No Ordinary Man
Maliciously outed after his death, musician Billy Tipton is now a transmasculine icon.
Quo Vadis, Aida?
Nominated for Best International Feature Film at this year’s Oscars, this extraordinary account of a 1995 Bosnian massacre is powerful, essential viewing.
Seven Songs for Malcolm X
Dramatic re-enactments, interviews and testimonies traverse and illuminate the life and death of Black American revolutionary Malcolm X.
This Rain Will Never Stop
Winner of Best First Appearance at IDFA 2020, this formally bold documentary traces a Kurdish-Ukrainian young man’s experiences of an endless cycle of war and peace.
Wirun
A Noongar high school student struggles to perform a Shakespearean sonnet for her drama class.
With the Cattle
A ruminative film on the interplay between bovine lives and human consumption.
Wojnarowicz
Artist, outsider, writer, queer activist. David Wojnarowicz was all of these things and more, as Chris McKim captures in his fiery documentary.
Word Is Out: Stories of Some of Our Lives
The first feature documentary made by queer filmmakers about queer life – by the Mariposa Film Group – captures an essential moment in the gay liberation movement.
Your Street
Winner of Best Short Film at the Swiss Film Awards, this documentary observes the impact of time – and historical trauma – on one commemorative street.