Rose of Nevada

Directed by: Mark Jenkin
Starring: Callum Turner, George MacKay, Rosalind Eleazar, Edward Rowe, Mary Woodvine, Francis Magee

A Cornish seaside town mysteriously returns to life in analogue auteur Mark Jenkin’s lo-fi sci-fi meditation on memory starring George MacKay and Callum Turner.

Thirty years ago, fishing trawler the Rose of Nevada vanished off the coast of Cornwall, taking its crew with it. Their village has been in decline ever since. When the boat suddenly reappears out of the fog one day, many townsfolk regard it as a good omen. A new crew is hired and heads out to sea. After a few days, they return with a full catch … but their home isn’t quite as they remember it.

Shooting in 16mm on vintage Bolex cameras, Jenkin uses visual and aural textures as storytelling devices, immersing viewers in deliberately uncanny realities and time loops.

“[A] mind-fuck of a flick … It’s not every day that you see a film that reminds you of the work of Mike Leigh and David Lynch at the same time.” – RogerEbert.com

The Man I Love

Directed by: Ira Sachs
Starring: Rami Malek, Tom Sturridge, Rebecca Hall, Ebon Moss-Bachrach, Luther Ford

Rami Malek captivates as an HIV-positive man who combats mortality with moxie in Ira Sachs’s Cannes-competing ode to queerness and libertinism.

New York, late 1980s. Having just left hospital, ebullient theatre artist Jimmy wants to take on life itself: partying with other figures from the West Village demimonde; preparing a spectacular oeuvre for the stage; being seen and loved in every way possible. He is loved, of course, despite his mercurial ego: by Dennis, his devoted partner, and by Brenda, his sister. But Jimmy’s HIV meds don’t guarantee survival; so, when a handsome young Brit moves into the building, Jimmy proceeds with abandon.

Minotaur (Минотавр)

Directed by: Andrey Zvyagintsev
Starring: Iris Lebedeva, Dmitriy Mazurov, Varvara Shmykova, Juris Zagars, Anatoliy Beliy

The winner of this year’s Grand Prix at Cannes, Andrey Zvyagintsev’s first film in almost a decade is an immaculate, sometimes darkly funny howl of rage at the corruption and moral entropy of Vladimir Putin’s war-enmeshed Russia.

In the immediate wake of his nation’s invasion of Ukraine, wealthy company CEO Gleb is directed to provide cannon fodder for Russia’s war machine. As he is ‘volunteering’ men to be drafted from within his employee pool, he learns that his wife Galina is having an affair with a handsome young artist. This intersection of Gleb’s professional and private crises becomes a trigger point for a shocking showdown.

After recovering from a near-fatal coma in 2021, dissident Russian director Andrey Zvyagintsev (Loveless, MIFF 2017) has returned to reinterpret Claude Chabrol’s 1969 classic The Unfaithful Wife as a staunchly contemporary study of masculinity, both personal and political. His life in exile in France has only sharpened his fury at the current state of his fatherland, which is directed with exquisite precision not just at Putin and his cronies but also at the everyday collaborators, deliberate or accidental, who proliferate in the shadow of war. Shot in Latvia, Minotaur is a merciless thriller for our present times, with a crisp and cunning eye for detail and a savage streak of wry humour – a pièce de résistance in more ways than one.

Parallel Tales (Histoires Parallèles)

Directed by: Asghar Farhadi
Starring: Isabelle Huppert, Virginie Efira, Vincent Cassel, Pierre Niney, Adam Bessa, Catherine Deneuve, India Hair

In the latest Cannes-bowing psychological drama from Asghar Farhadi, Isabelle Huppert leads an all-star ensemble cast, playing a creatively blocked author whose voyeurism causes art and life to bleed into one another.

Sylvie, a reclusive and irascible novelist living in squalor in Paris, struggles to get the creative juices flowing. To address this, she decides to train her telescope on the apartment across the street, where she spies two men and a woman fumbling around with sound recording equipment. Fascinated, she conjures up a melodramatic backstory for the threesome and starts typing. But when a stranger enters her orbit, the lines between fantasy, fabrication and fixation begin to blur.

Pressure

Directed by: Anthony Maras
Starring: Andrew Scott, Brendan Fraser, Kerry Condon, Chris Messina, Damian Lewis

Hours before D-Day, General Eisenhower’s chief meteorologist warns of brutal weather – but doesn’t predict the stormy debate he now faces to save Allied lives.

In 72 hours, Allied forces will launch a mass invasion of Normandy to recapture Europe from the Nazis. Newly arrived at HQ, Scottish meteorologist Captain James Stagg (Andrew Scott, Blue Moon, MIFF 2025) begs for a delay. His pioneering real-time weather observations are predicting heavy rain and high winds that will swamp boats or drive them calamitously off course. Ebullient US weatherman Irving P. Krick (Chris Messina, Call Jane, MIFF 2022), on the other hand, says Stagg’s just doomcasting, and that historical barometric charts indicate it’ll be positively balmy – which is just what arrogant British commander Bernard “Monty” Montgomery (Damian Lewis, Homeland) wants to hear. But the fate of the war, and the world, rests on whom General Dwight D. Eisenhower (Brendan Fraser, The Whale) chooses to trust.

Australian director Anthony Maras (Hotel Mumbai) dramatises this underappreciated historical turning point with moment-by-moment urgency, co-writing a grippingly cinematic adaptation of David Haig’s 2014 stage play.

Queen at Sea

Directed by: Lance Hammer
Starring: Juliette Binoche, Tom Courtenay, Anna Calder-Marshall, Steven Cree, Florence Hunt, Cody Molko

Amanda and her stepfather Martin struggle with a moral issue that divides them. Has Amanda’s mother, Leslie, who is experiencing advanced dementia, lost the ability to make critical decisions in her own best interest? If so, who is responsible – a spouse, a child, an institution – for making such a determination? As Amanda and Martin are forced to make increasingly difficult choices, the repercussions spiral out of their control.

Rose

Directed by: Markus Schleinzer
Starring: Sandra Hüller, Caro Braun, Marisa Growaldt, Godehard Giese, Robert Gwisdek

Amidst the turmoil of the Thirty Years´ War, somewhere in Germany, a mysterious soldier appears in a secluded Protestant village. Small and quiet, his face disfigured by a scar, this stranger declares himself the heir of a long-abandoned farmstead and produces a document to support his claim to the suspicious villagers. With time, he overcomes their doubts and shows himself to be a hard-working, God-fearing man, becoming part of the community in a quest for acceptance made up of impossible deceit. The true and twisted tale of a deceiver of land and folk, who, defying her birth as a woman, comported herself as a man and committed many a wicked deed.

Sheep in the Box (箱の中の羊)

Directed by: Hirokazu Koreeda
Starring: Haruka Ayase, Daigo Yamamoto, Rimu Kuwaki

In Hirokazu Kore-eda’s sci-fi-inflected parable, a bereaved couple adopt an AI-powered android to deal with a tragic loss.

In a near-future Japan of delivery drones and diet-monitoring fridges, REbirth has devised the ultimate remedy for grieving parents: a ‘replacement’ in the form of an anthropomorphic robot. Two years prior, an accident took architect Otone and carpenter Kensuke’s son Kakeru; when REbirth offers them a free trial, Otone doesn’t hesitate. While she becomes enamoured of the revived Kakeru, Kensuke is sceptical: “It’s a Tamagotchi. It’s a Roomba.” Gradually, they learn that making do is not the same as moving on.

“Kore-eda turns the stuff of dystopian nightmares into a beautiful fairytale study of loss … one of his purest, most dreamlike films to date.” – Deadline

Wishful Thinking

Directed by: Graham Parkes
Starring: Kate Berlant, Maya Hawke, Randall Park, Lewis Pullman, Kerri Kenney-Silver

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt37599264

This SXSW Grand Jury Award–winning high-concept rom-com playfully questions the notion that love is the most powerful force in existence … for better or worse.

Charlie and Julia are deeply in love. They are also fundamentally incompatible – Charlie wants to get married and start a family; Julia doesn’t – and they spend as much time fighting as they do making up. Desperate to fix their relationship, they visit twin TikTok love gurus Tilly and Tilly, whose mysterious counsel reminds the couple how and why they fell for each other. It also unlocks something else, with earth-shattering repercussions … literally.

Cheekily interpreting the real-world implications of Rhonda Byrne’s pseudoscientific self-help hit The Secret, first-time feature director Graham Parkes creates a wonderfully witty, lived-in love story with a supernatural through-line that’s as hilarious as it is horrifying. Utilising ingenious split-screen techniques and capturing the stunning vistas of the Pacific Northwest, Parkes and cinematographer Christopher Ripley ensure the film looks incredible, while Lewis Pullman (The Testament of Ann Lee) and Maya Hawke (Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, MIFF 2019; Stranger Things) are phenomenal as Charlie and Julia, exuding chemistry while anchoring every emotional heartbeat and delivering every punchline to perfection. With a supporting cast that includes Randall Park, Kate Berlant and Jon Hamm as himself in a brilliantly executed recurring bit, Wishful Thinking is a boldly original, funny and insightful study of the wonderful delusion at the heart of all love: that its exhilarating highs and heartbreaking lows can change the world.

“A wildly entertaining experience, underscored by jaw-dropping, gasp-inducing humour … It’s a blast of misery and euphoria bouncing off a filthy funhouse mirror, announcing the arrival of a director to watch.” – Variety

Yellow Letters (Gelbe Briefe)

Directed by: İlker Çatak
Starring: Özgü Namal, Tansu Biçer, Leyla Smyrna Cabas, İpek Bilgin

Derya and Aziz, a celebrated artist couple from Ankara, lead a fulfilling life with their 13-year-old daughter Ezgi – until an incident at the premiere of their new play changes everything. Overnight, they find themselves targeted by the state and lose their jobs and their home. They move to Istanbul to temporarily stay with Aziz’s mother. While Aziz ekes out a living with odd jobs and holds on to his convictions, Derya searches for a way to become financially independent. An increasing distance grows between them and their daughter until they are forced to choose between their values ​​and their shared future as a family.

The 2026 Melbourne International Film Festival is on from 6-23 August.
For full details visit https://miff.com.au

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Josephine

Directed by: Beth de Araújo
Starring: Mason Reeves, Channing Tatum, Gemma Chan, Philip Ettinger, Syra McCarthy

After eight-year-old Josephine (Mason Reeves) accidentally witnesses a crime in Golden Gate Park, she begins to act out violently to protect herself. This emotional trauma leads to conflicts between her parents (Channing Tatum and Gemma Chan) as they search for justice, and a way to feel safe again.

All of a Sudden
(Soudain/急に具合が悪くなる)

Directed by: Ryusuke Hamaguchi
Starring: Tao Okamoto, Virginie Efira, Marie Bunel, Kodai Kurosaki, Kyôzô Nagatsuka

Virginie Efira and Tao Okamoto shared Best Actress Awards at Cannes for their sterling work in the latest long-form opus from master filmmaker Ryusuke Hamaguchi.

Marie-Lou (Virginie Efira, Parallel Tales, MIFF 2026) runs an aged-care facility on the outskirts of Paris. She’s devoted to her job and her patients, and firmly believes that the elderly should be treated with dignity. It’s tough work, and, like so many of her employees, she’s dealing with burnout. But her spirit is rekindled when she meets Japanese playwright Mari (Tao Okamoto), who’s staging a theatre piece about the history of mental asylums in Italy. As they plunge headlong into all-night conversations about mortality, philosophy and the degradations of capitalism, Mari and Marie-Lou’s new friendship will change both of their lives.

The Beloved (El ser querido)

Directed by: Rodrigo Sorogoyen
Starring: Marina Foïs, Raul Arevalo, Victoria Luengo, Javier Bardem

Javier Bardem enthrals as a legendary director with ambiguous intentions who casts his estranged daughter in an upcoming film.

Esteban, a widely laurelled enfant terrible of global cinema, has returned to Spain to shoot a period film entitled Desert. He wants his daughter Emilia – who’s had roles on TV, and whom he hasn’t seen in 30 years – to play the lead. Despite having baggage around his alcoholism and aggression, she takes the part. Once together, the pair feel the heat not just of the production’s Canary Islands setting but also of the tensions that simmer between them.

Bitter Christmas (Amarga Navidad)

Directed by: Pedro Almodóvar
Starring: Bárbara Lennie, Leonardo Sbaraglia, Aitana Sánchez-Gijón, Victoria Luengo, Patrick Criado, Milena Smit, Quim Gutiérrez

Bitter Christmas tells two alternating stories, one starring Elsa, an advertising director, in 2004, during a long weekend in December. The second takes place in 2026 and stars Raúl, a screenwriter and director who is writing a script that we soon discover is the story of Elsa, her boyfriend Bonifacio, and her friends Patricia and Natalia. Mixed with fiction, Elsa is, in a way, Raúl’s alter ego, who, like him, resorts to autofiction as a solution to a long period of creative drought. He looks inside himself, and he can’t help but also look at the people who make up his most intimate universe: his partner and his assistant.

The film narrates the close relationship between reality and fiction, between inspiration and life, exploring the limits of autofiction and stories within stories.

Coward

Directed by: Lukas Dhont
Starring: Valentin Campagne, Emmanuel Macchia

Lukas Dhont’s stirring latest film – which won its leads a pair of Best Actor prizes at Cannes – depicts a clandestine romance between two young men that blooms in the trenches of WWI.

It’s 1916, and Pierre and Francis have been conscripted to fight on the Western Front. Nicknamed “Quiet Mouse”, the former is a handsome, brawny farmer who struggles to express himself; the latter, a tailor’s son, is flamboyant and creative. Francis is enlisted to direct a theatre troupe that will entertain the soldiers, a role that includes cross-dressing as the female lead. When Pierre is tasked with assisting the troupe, the pair’s opposing qualities draw them together – and collaboration evolves into something more.

Hear My Eyes: Memento

Directed by: Christopher Nolan
Starring: Guy Pearce, Carrie-Anne Moss, Joe Pantoliano
New music by: Michael “CAVS” Cavanagh

See Christopher Nolan’s breakthrough film, complete with an all-new live score by Michael “CAVS” Cavanagh (King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard).

Before the billion-dollar blockbusters, before Batman, before Oppenheimer, Christopher Nolan released his second feature: Memento. The independent thriller quickly became a cultural phenomenon, earning Oscar nominations for Best Original Screenplay and Best Film Editing, and introduced audiences to the narrative puzzles, fractured timelines and obsessive attention to detail that would come to define the director’s work.

For this special presentation, Michael “CAVS” Cavanagh of King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard reimagines the film with an all-new live score, performing solo across multiple drum kits and a suite of electronic instruments. Technical and bombastic, Cavanagh’s performance will mirror the intensity and precision at the heart of Nolan’s most audacious work. Part film screening, part live concert, Hear My Eyes has spent over a decade creating immersive cinema experiences, building a loyal following through collaborations including Terminator 2: Judgment Day with Peter Van Hoesen and Robin Fox, Chopper with Springtime and Mick Harvey, Wake in Fright with Surprise Chef, and Pan’s Labyrinth with Sleep D. For Nolan devotees and anyone who loves cinema that takes risks, this is a chance to revisit a cult classic, live and reimagined.

https://www.hearmyeyes.com.au/events/memento/

The Dreamed Adventure
(Das geträumte Abenteuer)

Directed by: Valeska Grisebach
Starring: Syuleyman Letifov, Tiana Georgieva, Yana Radeva, Denislava Yordanova, Nikolay Shekerdjiev, Stoicho Kostadinov

On the border between Bulgaria, Greece, and Turkey, a woman agrees to help an old acquaintance with an illegal mission.

Fatherland (Ojczyzna)

Directed by: Paweł Pawlikowski
Starring: Sandra Hüller, Hanns Zischler, August Diehl, Devid Striesow, Anna Madeley

At the height of the Cold War, Fatherland centers on the relationship between the writer Thomas Mann and his daughter Erika—actress, writer and rally driver—as they embark on a road trip in a black Buick cruiser across a Germany in ruins.

The Incomer

Directed by: Louis Paxton
Starring: John Hannah, Domhnall Gleeson, Michelle Gomez, Grant O’Rourke, Gayle Rankin

On a remote Scottish isle, siblings Isla and Sandy hunt birds and talk to mythical beings while fighting off outsiders. Their lives change when Daniel, an awkward official, arrives to relocate them.

La Bola Negra

Directed by: Javier Calvo, Javier Ambrossi
Starring: Guitarricadelafuente, Miguel Bernardeau, Carlos González, Milo Quifes, Lola Dueñas, Penélope Cruz, Glenn Close

Sharing the Best Director Prize at Cannes, this sublime time-hopping triptych recounts three men’s experiences of love, legacy and the unending fight for queer liberation.

In 1937, musician Sebastián is conscripted into the Spanish Civil War by the pro-Franco army; there, he meets and falls for a handsome leftist prisoner. In 1932, Carlos attempts to gain membership to an exclusive casino but is rejected due to rumours about his homosexuality. And in 2017, historian Alberto inherits a gift from his estranged grandfather that exacerbates tensions with his mother. Across the decades, these men’s stories interweave and bleed into one another, revealing threads that connect them in profound, unexpected ways.

The 2026 Melbourne International Film Festival is on from 6-23 August.
For full details go to https://miff.com.au/

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Wicker

Directed by: Alex Huston Fischer and Eleanor Wilson
Starring: Olivia Colman, Alexander Skarsgård, Elizabeth Debicki, Marli Siu, Nabhaan Rizwan, Richard E. Grant, Peter Dinklage, Ben Ashenden

In a small medieval farming town with rigid social hierarchy and patriarchal culture, a recluse fisherwoman is the subject of ostracism due to her persistent fish smell and outright rejection of institutionalized marriage. When the japes at her spinster status intensify, she sarcastically commissions herself a husband made out of wicker. The master weaver indeed brings the Wicker Husband to life, where his honest, helpful nature and total dedication to his wife creates a romance so pure it causes absolute chaos amongst the villagers of the closed minded town.

Paper Tiger

Directed by: James Gray
Starring: Adam Driver, Scarlett Johansson, Miles Teller

In James Gray’s deeply felt and intense drama two brothers, in 1980s Queens, become entangled in a scheme that turns out to be too good to be true. They find themselves caught up with the Russian mafia, which ends up terrorising their suburban family and puts their own sibling bond to the test.

Big Girls Don’t Cry

Directed by: Paloma Schneideman
Starring: Ani Palmer, Noah Taylor, Rain Spencer, Beatrix Wolfe

This is the debut feature from Schneiderman. Rural New Zealand, 2006. Over one transformative summer, 14 year-old Sid Bookman discovers desire, identity and the internet, as she imitates the people she longs to be loved by.

Dead Man’s Wire

Directed by: Gus Van Sant
Starring: Bill Skarsgård, Dacre Montgomery, Cary Elwes, Myha’la, Colman Domingo, Al Pacino

On February 8, 1977, Tony Kiritsis entered the office of Richard Hall, president of the Meridian Mortgage Company, and took him hostage with a sawed-off shotgun wired with a “dead man’s wire” from the trigger to Tony’s own neck.

I Want Your Sex

Directed by: Gregg Araki
Starring: Olivia Wilde, Cooper Hoffman, Mason Gooding, Chase Sui Wonders, Johnny Knoxville, Margaret Cho, Roxane Mesquida, Charli XCX, Daveed Diggs

When fresh-faced Elliot (Hoffman) lands an exciting job for renowned artist, icon and provocateur Erika Tracy (Wilde), his fantasies come true as Erika taps him to become her sexual muse. But Elliot soon finds himself out of his depth as Erika takes him on a journey more profound than he ever could have imagined, into a world of sex, obsession, power, betrayal and murder.

Blue Heron

Directed by: Sophy Romvari
Starring: Eylul Guven, Edik Beddoes, Amy Zimmer, Ádám Tompa, Iringó Réti

Sasha, the eight-year-old daughter of a Hungarian immigrant family who relocate to Vancouver Island in the late 1990s while their oldest son Jeremy (Edik Beddoes) displays increasingly dangerous behavioural issues in their new environment.

Goodbye Cruel World (Adieu monde cruel)

Directed by: Félix de Givry
Starring: Milo Machado-Graner, Jane Beever, Françoise Lebrun, Emmanuelle Destremau, Erwan Kepoa Falé

14-year-old Otto vanishes after writing goodbye letters to his classmates. Everyone thinks he’s dead, but his classmate Léna spots him walking the streets one night.

French Girls

Directed by: Hyun Lee
Starring: Mia Kidis, Daia, Megan Douglas, Nash Edgerton, Anya Beyersdorf

An inspired act of micro-budget filmmaking, this playful gig economy parable set in the Sydney fashion scene introduces an impressive array of new Australian talent.

Mia is floating through life: dating a small-time scammer; killing time in front of screens; working a menial job in construction. When the unexpected opportunity arises for her to exchange hi-vis for high fashion, she reluctantly falls into the world of modelling, where there’s ample money, prestige, gossip … and just as much boredom. Lost between old friends who judge her new job and new friends she can’t quite trust, Mia keeps floating along. Via a series of questionable choices and increasing misadventures, however, she will ultimately become infamous.

Sweet Milk Lake

Directed by: Harvey Zielinski
Starring: Mia Morrissey, Harvey Zielinski, Hunter Page-Lochard, Kieran Darcy-Smith, Nic Cassim, Ngaire Pigram, David Howell, Belinda McClory

After being mistaken for his brother, a young trans man adapts to a precarious new life in his estranged father’s rural town.

City boy Jake is at a loose end. Unemployed, single and holed up in a granny flat behind his family home, he lives in the shadow of his cisgender twin brother, successful real estate agent Sam. On an impulse, he takes a trip to the remote country town of Sweet Milk, where his terminally ill, estranged father (Kieran Darcy-Smith) still lives, totally unaware that Jake has transitioned. When his dad mistakes him for Sam and Jake misses the moment to correct him, an unforeseen opportunity lands in his lap: to fit in as masculine in a place where nobody suspects he’s trans. Adopting Sam’s identity, he manages to connect with his father for the first time, while a budding romance with local Toby (Hunter Page-Lochard, Kid Snow, MIFF 2024) – himself an outsider in this macho setting – offers further reinvigoration. But the longer Jake spends in Sweet Milk, the more tangled the web he weaves. How long can he hold on to his secret, and what will happen if the truth gets out?

The Friend’s House Is Here
(Khaneh doost injast )

Directed by: Hossein Keshavarz and Maryam Ataei

Starring: Mahshad Bahram, Hana Mana, Farzad Karen, Zohreh Pirnia

Both a charismatic hangout movie and a courageous act of dissent, this Sundance winner spends quality time with two young women trying to make art in Iran.

Hanna (Hana Mana) is a contemporary dancer who posts videos of her work online, while playwright Pari (Mahshad Bahram) stages experimental theatre productions. In Iran, both of these acts are illegal. Thick-as-thieves besties and housemates who participate in Tehran’s underground art communities, they live their lives – as artists, feminists and unwed women – in defiance of an authoritarian government that is openly hostile to everything they do. Armed with their friendship, their ideologies and a serious streak of rebellion, Hanna and Pari try to make art and make it through another day.

Nearly four decades after Iranian cinema legend Abbas Kiarostami’s breakout 1987 film posed the eternal question Where Is the Friend’s House?, Hossein Keshavarz and Maryam Ataei deliver a playful answer. Inspired by classic Iranian art movies, Jean-Luc Godard’s political films of the 1960s and the US indie mumblecore movement, The Friend’s House Is Here is a movie about how to live your best, most creative life under a repressive regime. Shot in secret and smuggled out of Iran to make its Sundance premiere, the film went on to receive the festival’s U.S. Dramatic Special Jury Award for Ensemble Cast – a just reward for the non-professional actors (many themselves working artists) who appear in this film.

“A film about life-defining friendships, along with the healing properties of sisterhood … feels like a compassionate gift, given in gratitude to all artists who refuse to be silenced.” – Variety

Sadly there is not a trailer for this film yet. However, here is a Vulture interview with the filmmakers detailing their struggle to get the film made and out of Iran.

The 2026 Melbourne International Film Festival is on from 6-23 August.
For full details go to https://miff.com.au/

Subscribe now