The Melbourne International Film Festival is over for another year. I always feel equal parts exhausted and sad that it’s over, feeling like 12 months is a long time to wait for the next one.
This year I saw 60 films over 17 days, which is around 3.5 a day. The most I saw a day was 4, the least 2 (that was a relaxing day). I watched two films that were 4 hours long – Menus-Plaisirs which made it onto my top 10 – and Occupied City, and one that was over 3 hours long and also in my top 10 – Dying (Sterben). I saw lots of films with friends, even my family for one session!
By the end of the festival, I felt a bit disappointed in the program, although I saw lots of great films. Every year you are looking for the films that take your breath away and usually there are only a handful each year but this year I felt like I barely saw any that I felt confident were 5 star ones for me. FYI, my three 5 star films this year were Green Border, The Outrun, and The Girl With the Needle.
I’m biased in my selection, of course, and gravitate toward female directors, stories about women, and First Nations stories, with a few late night horror films thrown in. I’m less inclined to book films that are from the US and have known stars in them, experimental films or slow cinema (although I deliberately picked some of the latter this year just for the experience). When I look at my stats afterwards, usually almost half of the films I see have female directors (despite me deliberately preferencing these it’s never been more than 48%) and over 80% pass the Bechdel Test. This year was not so great – only 63% passed the Bechdel and 45% had female directors.
The overall feeling I got was a lack of films with kick ass women, – lots of broken and traumatised women or women oppressed without much hope for change – lots of films about homo- and transphobia but not much queer joy (My Old Ass and Teaches of Peaches being two exceptions) and a dearth of First Nations voices. It may have been my selections.
Here are my top 10 (also represented below in the gallery of poster images):
- Green Border
- The Outrun
- The Girl with the Needle
- The Story of Souleymane
- I Shall Not Hate
- The Damned
- My Favourite Cake
- Menus-Plaisirs – Les Troisgros
- My Old Ass
- Dying (Sterben)
Honourable mentions to some fabulous documentaries:
- Teaches of Peaches
- Black Box Diaries
- Secret Mall Apartment
- No Other Land
MIFF made some changes this year, the most controversial being to have allocated seating at the Forum and ACMI cinemas. One of the challenges of MIFF is the sprint from one cinema to another so you can get into the queue to get a decent seat. This usually means no time for food and so MIFF overall can be quite taxing on your health and wellbeing. Deluxe membership would give you the advantage of joining a shorter queue that would be let in first, pretty much guaranteeing a good seat except for the ‘nightmare’ venues – the Comedy (not used as a venue this year), Capitol and Kino – where decent seats are limited.
So this year, you needed to book your seat with your ticket for Forum and ACMI, with the bulk of films, particularly during the first week being at ACMI. I’m particular with my seat choice so when the program opened this year at 8pm, I stayed up until 3.30am going through the program of 250+ films and 400+ sessions to book my 78 films. It meant that it was harder to sit with friends, although I did then send my seat allocations to a few friends who were able to get seats next to me (because of the unpopular seat choices). It felt like a hassle at the time but it meant that many, many times, I could grab a coffee or food and stroll into my film session relaxed, fed and caffeinated just before the scheduled start time.
I spoke to many an unhappy Deluxe member though, mainly people older than me (technically Boomers) who felt their privilege as ‘deluxers’ had been diminished as ‘everyone just goes in at the same time!’ They were used to sitting with a changing group of friends and I suspect had not been as tech savvy as me to lock everything in straight away. the allocated seating would negatively affect anyone who sees MIFF as a more social experience and is less of a benefit if you’re not trying to cram 50+ films in.
That diminishing of the feeling of importance that deluxers have along with a hefty price rise for the deluxe membership (up from around $570 to $650) created a bad feeling that I suspect will come out in the feedback surveys and prompted the email from MIFF during the festival reminding deluxe members to treat volunteers respectfully. MIFF deluxers can lose sight of the bigger picture (no pun intended).
All in all, it was still a great experience and I am grateful to my MIFF buddies Ariel, Kyle and Lowell for their company and considered opinions.
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