Welcome to MIFF 2024
Welcome to MIFF’s 72nd edition. We are so excited to bring you this carefully curated program of the best new cinema and important retrospectives from every corner of the globe.
Melbourne’s love for cinema runs deep, and I am quickly learning just how hungry our MIFF community is for this annual cavalcade of stimulating cinema.
Congratulations to the thousands of screen professionals who have invested so much in creating the stories we will share across MIFF’s 18 magnificent days of cinema. Your imagination, creativity, stamina and tight teamwork are an inspiration.
Largely unseen by audiences, MIFF’s Industry programs will again run alongside the festival with our cornerstone activity, the MIFF 37°South Market, being a critical platform particularly for local screen producers and creatives to connect with international screen content financiers and decision-makers. We look forward to the inspiration and connections created through this screen marketplace for showcasing and network development. Meanwhile, the MIFF Premiere Fund is a vital pathway to elevate new local films making their debut. We are excited to present seven Premiere Fund films in the 2024 program – through galas and very special events.
I extend our huge thanks to the MIFF Circle Patrons, MIFF Members and Partners who believe in our purpose and provide invaluable support in delivering MIFF’s mission to bring you the stories of the world through unforgettable screen experiences. It is your support that means MIFF can be presented at a scale that meets our audience’s appetite for Australia’s biggest screen event. Our thanks to principal government partner the Victorian Government through VicScreen, and major government partners City of Melbourne and Screen Australia.
The MIFF team are legends who work tirelessly every day to strengthen our organisation and ensure each edition of our festival is unique and wonderful – and the best experience possible for our audience. Thank you.
There truly is something in this festival for every cinema-lover. I urge you to be adventurous and gorge yourself on cinema. Stay for a Q&A or meet other cinema-lovers after the screening in the MIFF Festival Hub, presented by Challenger, or the Campari Cinema Lounge. We look forward to welcoming you and can’t wait to share these stories with you.
Damien Hodgkinson
Chief Executive Officer, MIFF
MIFF is back with a massive program showcasing the best in local and international cinema.
The Victorian Government is a longstanding partner and supporter of MIFF, which is both a highlight of our cultural calendar and a vital part of our screen industry.
Putting local talent in the spotlight, this year’s festival kicks off with the Australian premiere of Adam Elliot’s latest Melbourne-made masterpiece Memoir of a Snail, which we have been proud to back through VicScreen and the MIFF Premiere Fund.
Beyond the diverse line-up of screenings, the Industry programs make MIFF a place where deals are made, opportunities are forged and projects are taken from script to screen.
The festival draws to a close with the announcement of the Bright Horizons Award, one of the world’s biggest film prizes.
Whether you’re a film buff, a filmmaker or a first-timer, there is plenty to enjoy at MIFF 2024.
The Hon. Colin Brooks MP
Minister for Creative Industries
To attend the Melbourne International Film Festival is to experience one of the best film festivals in the world.
As a long-time supporter, the City of Melbourne is proud of its rich history and the ways it lights up our city every August. It’s a joy to see Melbourne’s streets buzzing with cinema fans, festival guests, volunteers and filmmakers who flock from across the world for 18 intriguing days and nights of programming in our city’s iconic theatres.
Congratulations to the festival organisers for presenting such a bold, original and diverse offering of experiences in dozens of languages, including the world’s largest showcase of Australian films.
The City of Melbourne is proud to continue to support MIFF through its Creative Investment Partnership Program. I wish all attendees an enjoyable festival ahead.
Nicholas Reece
Lord Mayor of Melbourne
Cinematically synonymous with the bluster of a Melbourne winter, MIFF returns in 2024, heralding a heady voyage and a venturing into films far from our doorstep, and far from the rickety pseudo-imaginations of the entertainment currently clogging up the screens, feeds and brains of Melburnians.
Prepare to have the vanilla-dopamine hits of your non-MIFF-season entertainment shattered, once again, by cinema.
The festival starts with a hometown celebration of one of our finest Melburnian moviemakers: Adam Elliot’s long-awaited MIFF Premiere Fund–supported Memoir of a Snail – dark, delightful and attuned to the shonkily beloved wavelengths of Australian suburbia (not to mention the joys of a Chiko Roll). Opening Night will be a moment you must be there for – along with so many others this year.
From Justin Kurzel’s portrait of Warren Ellis in Ellis Park, a film so contemporary in the binds it makes between compassion and creativity, to our world-premiere Family Gala of Magic Beach, Robert Connolly’s ambitious adaptation of the beloved Australian children’s classic (and don’t forget the repeat screening at Peninsula Hot Springs for a more aquatically immersive movie-going time!), there are films to be found for everyone among this year’s bumper 250+ film crop.
Films that will hone your mind to the urgent matters of the world around you; others that will take you far from any semblance of reality; there are the formally -adventurous and the experimentally leaning, the hilarious, the terror--inducing, and those that are warm hugs to reset your heart amid the cold days.
This year, we’re particularly thrilled to present a major retrospective program uniquely curated for MIFF from The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) New York’s landmark Iranian Cinema before the Revolution, 1925–1979 retrospective. Iranian New Wave: 1962–79 is an expansive collection of underseen and outrightly unseen greats of the Iranian cinema canon from the 60s and 70s, also including nonfiction and rarely screened work from the golden era of Iranian animation. It’s a rare onscreen opportunity not to be missed.
Elsewhere, our Bright Horizons competition is unmissable cinema – returning for its third year, a lightning rod for the most important breakthrough voices in world cinema, as we celebrate the new, the next, the bold and the best. All presented in Australian premiere (and many with IMAX screenings!), and with a number of international filmmakers on the ground in Melbourne, Bright Horizons flips the film-competition model to focus on discovery, on ascent into auteurship – a chance for audiences to meet the most important new filmmakers as they shape cinema before your eyes. I hope you’ll check out what has come to be one of the most singular and exciting destinations for film within the program-at-large.
MIFF, again, continues to meet you where you are: within metropolitan Melbourne, alongside weekend expansions to seven country Victorian towns, or all across Australia at your place, with a selection of festival highlights screening via MIFF’s online season on ACMI’s virtual Cinema 3.
Being part of an audience these days is not a passive pursuit, and that is at the heart of the modern MIFF. Our hometown’s own brand of cinematic maximalism, a path forged across hundred of movies – it’s a beautiful thing, and it is back to enjoy. Thank you, as ever, for being a part of MIFF, and for your support of and interest in the festival. We at MIFF hope this program catches your curiosity. We’ll see you in the cinema this August.