
2008
Blake Williams returns to MIFF with a stereoscopic 3D piece that collapses time, distance and intimacy.

Accelerator Shorts: MIFF 68½

All Light, Everywhere
A visionary exploration of the inherent biases in surveillance technology from one of North America’s most fascinating and inventive documentary filmmakers.

Babi Yar. Context
The perpetration and subsequent cover-up of one of the 20th century’s worst mass murders are examined in detail in Sergei Loznitsa’s remarkable archival collage.

Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn
Sex is fodder for black comedy in this scathing portrayal of life in the age of COVID-19.

Bergman Island
One of world cinema’s most famous locations becomes the backdrop for this intricate relationship drama by Mia Hansen-Løve.

Bodies in Motion

Center Stage
A unique melding of biopic and biographical documentary, this 90s classic – sumptuously restored in time for its 30th anniversary – pays tribute to a vanished era of cinema.

City Hall
Veteran filmmaker Frederick Wiseman offers a fascinating longform insight into the dramas, frustrations and triumphs of local government.

Come Here
A striking work of mood and atmosphere from one of Thailand’s most daring formalist filmmakers.

Days
The intricacies of a moment of connection are dwelt on in this meditative examination of male desire by Tsai Ming-liang.

Dear Comrades!
A Soviet official finds her loyalty to the regime tested when her daughter goes missing in the aftermath of a massacre.

Drive My Car
Ryūsuke Hamaguchi returns with another enigmatically melancholy tale of human desire, loneliness and love – one that nabbed Cannes’ Best Screenplay award.

earthearthearth
IFFR Tiger Award winner Daïchi Saïto presents an absorbing, otherworldly study of our planet.

The Echo
In a nondescript place, seemingly forgotten by time, a teenager tries to outrun his loneliness.

Evolution
Contemporary Europe, Jewish identity and the legacy of the Holocaust form a bubbling cauldron in this intergenerational triptych.

Experimental Shorts

Genus Pan
Slow-cinema master Lav Diaz returns with another mordantly meditative piece – one that nabbed him Venice’s Orizzonti Best Director gong.

The Girl and the Spider
An intricate psychological ode to simmering emotion amid unfettered separation anxiety, which took home two Encounters awards at the Berlinale.

Glimpses from a Visit to Orkney in Summer 1995
Remembrance blooms in this New York Film Festival–premiering avant-garde short.

Happy Valley
Shot on cold-hued 16mm, this mournful, restless ode to Hong Kong sketches the city’s fragile present and indefinite future.

Helmut Newton: The Bad and the Beautiful
Misogynist or champion of women? This expansive portrait of a controversial fashion icon captures both light and shade.

A Hero
The new film from dual Oscar winner Asghar Farhadi, which took home Cannes 2021’s Grand Prix, is a tale of redemption, veneration and modern morality.

House Arrest
A satirical, modern-day David-and-Goliath tale that presents a persuasive case for citizens’ responsibility to fight for the future.

The Human Voice
Tilda Swinton sets the screen ablaze in Pedro Almodóvar’s expressionistic, dangerously dramatic English-language debut.

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.

International Shorts 2

In the Earth
In a forest in England, Ben Wheatley builds the folk horror of your most feverish pandemic nightmares.

Introduction
Connection is at the heart of Hong Sang-soo’s charming yet deceptively complex multiple-character study.

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.

Memoria
Apichatpong Weerasethakul returns with this hotly anticipated English-language collaboration with Tilda Swinton, which won the 2021 Cannes Jury Prize.

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.

Notturno
From the director of Golden Bear winner Fire at Sea comes an achingly poetic, humane meditation on life in the shadow of war and the Islamic State.

Petite Maman
Céline Sciamma returns with a delicate tale of childhood and an intergenerational connection that crosses through time.

Pickpocket
Capturing the malaise of Chinese society at the tail end of the 20th century, Jia Zhang-ke’s restored feature debut is ripe for re-examination.

Playlist
In this delightful slacker story, a young Parisian comic-book artist is on the hunt for stability, a career, self-confidence, love – but nothing seems to go her way.

The Prelude - Michelle
An exquisitely shot insight into dance, dramaturgy and performance featuring dancer Michelle Heaven.

Preparations to Be Together for an Unknown Period of Time
Love and reality go under the scalpel in this story of obsession on the streets of Budapest.

Social Hygiene
Denis Côté’s witty, theatrical battle of the sexes turns social distancing into an exercise in mutual estrangement.

There Is No Evil
Questions of morality and duty play out against the backdrop of the Iranian justice system in the 2020 Berlinale’s Golden Bear winner.

Thorax
Siegfried A. Fruhauf returns with a dazzlingly abstracted Rorschach-like lightshow.

Three Floors
From Palme d’Or winner Nanni Moretti comes this highly anticipated new drama of disparate lives in an Italian apartment complex.

Train Again
Peter Tscherkassky pays homage to avant-garde filmmaker Kurt Kren, his own film L’arrivée and the cinema’s original muse in this Cannes Directors’ Fortnight selection.

The Tsugua Diaries
Both a “lockdown journal” and a piece of fiction, this collaboration between Portuguese auteurs pushes the limits between truth and tale.

Undine
Christian Petzold’s reimagining of an ancient myth will pull you in with its shadowy undertow.

Valpi (Tectonics)
Dianna Barrie and Richard Tuohy present a lo-fi 3D film captured in the crushing shadow of volcanoes.

The Village Detective: A Song Cycle
Bill Morrison revisits lesser-known chapters of Soviet film history in this hypnotic fever dream that melds art and archive.

Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy
Japanese favourite Ryūsuke Hamaguchi enchants with a playfully enigmatic, female-centric triptych that won the Silver Bear Grand Jury Prize at this year’s Berlinale.

Wolf Children
Just your ordinary story of a girl who falls in love with a wolfman and raises their children – this anime classic celebrates difference and unconventional families.

Year of the Everlasting Storm
Jafar Panahi, Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Laura Poitras and other global cinema heavyweights reflect on 2020 in this sweeping anthology film for the COVID age.