From the star-studded parties on the French Riviera to the trendy laneways of Melbourne, 25 films from the Cannes Film Festival will make their way to the Melbourne International Film Festival, many of which won’t have screened anywhere else.
From the Festival’s Competition, MIFF will screen Lars von Trier’s Melancholia (Best Actress for Kirsten Dunst), a mesmerizing family drama in the face of the apocalypse; Nicolas Winding Refn’s Drive, starring Ryan Gosling, Carey Mulligan, Oscar Isaac and Albert Brooks, about a Hollywood stunt driver by day, a loner by nature who moonlights as a top-notch getaway driver-for-hire in the criminal underworld; Maiwenn le Besco’s Polisse (Jury Prize), a dynamic and involved portrait of officers working in a Parisian Child Protection Unit; Markus Schleinzer’s Michael, the controversial Austrian drama focusing on five months in the life of a seemingly normal man who keeps a 10 year-old boy locked in his basement; Aki Kaurismäki’s Le Havre (FIPRESCI prize), a pitch-perfect return to form from the Finnish director, that tells the story of a shoeshiner who tries to save an immigrant child in the French port city Le Havre; Japanese director Naomi Kawase’s Hanezu, an evocative romantic drama based on the novel by Masako Bando; and Joseph Cedar’s Footnote (Best Screenplay), which depicts the intense, eccentric rivalry of father and son professors, divided by accolades, and the misplaced recognition of a life’s work.
