Sometimes the funniest comedy comes from the most fantastical, awkward and tragic situations; from humour that violates our moral expectations, oversteps boundaries or finds light in the darkest corners.

TV director Natalie Bailey (The Thick of It) joins comedian Josh Thomas, playwright Lally Katz (star of Stories I Want to Tell You in Person, MIFF 2015) and directors Sebastián Silva (the subject of a MIFF 2015 retrospective) and Adam Elliot (Ernie Biscuit, MIFF 2015) to discuss how the juxtaposition of these opposing forces results in humour.

Natalie Bailey has established herself as one of the UK’s go to comedy directors, series directing on BBC3's Pramface series 3, BBC2’s Heading Out, BBC4s Quick Cuts and the new David Hasselhoff comedy, Hoff The Record, for Dave UK. She was also lead director on BBC2s award-winning, political-comedy The Thick of It series 4. Natalie has recently relocated to Australia to work as a producer and director with Princess Pictures in Melbourne and is currently directing a sketch show for Foxtel Australia.

Lally Katz is the most produced Australian playwright of her generation. Her recent work for the stage includes Neighbourhood Watch at Belvoir and MTC starring Robyn Nevin and at STCSA starring Miriam Margolyes (a production which broke their box office record). The play was nominated for a NSW Premier's Literary Award, a Helpmann and an Australian Writers Guild award. It is being adapted as a feature film with director Gillian Armstrong. Her one-woman show Stories I Want to Tell You in Person, played at Belvoir and Malthouse in 2013, and toured to New York and Mexico City, Adelaide and Albury. It has been adapted for screen by Erin White and screens this year at MIFF.

Josh Thomas was a regular favourite on Network Ten’s Good News Week, has appeared several times on ABC's Q&A, hosted the prestigious Melbourne Comedy Festival Gala and was the Generation Y Team Captain on Network Ten’s Talkin’ ‘Bout Your Generation. In 2013 the show he wrote and starred in, Please Like Me, premiered on ABC2 and launched brand new cable network Pivot.tv in the USA. The show was received with critical acclaim listed in the "Best TV Shows of 2013" by Entertainment Weekly, The New Yorker and Time Magazine to name a few and it also received a nomination for an International Emmy Award in 2014.

Adam Elliot is the son of an acrobatic prawn farmer. He describes his pictures and animated films as clayographies; bittersweet adult clay biographies based on his family, friends and acquaintances. He uses only traditional stopmotion and photographic techniques to create his work, and every prop, set and character is hand crafted using clay, cardboard, wire and paint. He has created six clayographies to date, which have been voiced by actors including Philip Seymour Hoffman, Geoffrey Rush, Barry Humphries, Eric Bana and Toni Collette. His films have accumulated over 100 awards including the 2004 Short Animation Academy Award™ for Harvie Krumpet.

Sebastián Silva is a Chilean director and screenwriter who has been winning awards and accolades for his films since his debut feature, Life Kills Me, in 2007. Working across film and television, he has an eye for the absurd and is adroit at digging into his characters’ psychology and bending genre conventions. His work is the focus of retrospective program at MIFF this year that will screen Silva’s full œuvre.