I am finding two themes at this year‘s Melbourne Film Festival – people dislocated from their land and people abusing the power they have been given.
Continue readingLost Land (Harà Watan) (2025)
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Tilaï (The Law)(1990)
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This gentle and ominous fable rather remarkably won Idrissa Ouedraogo the Grand Prix at Cannes in 1990.
Continue readingBarbara Forever (2026)
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My MIFF BFF Ariel said I had to see this film as Barbara Hammer is the most important lesbian filmmaker ever. I’m glad I did.
Continue readingFilipiñana (2026)
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This had the pastel hued satire of Greener Grass (2019) but with the bleak and sobering reality (without the fever dream) of Sweet Dreams (2023).
Continue readingStrawberries (La Más Dulce) (2026)
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This seems to be a theme in the films that I am watching at the Melbourne Film Festival that when people have power they will abuse it, and by people I mean men.
Continue readingThe Siege of Paradise (2026)
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This cozy Irish documentary by Gar O’Rourke (Sanatorium (2025)) about the over tourism of the Cinque Terre sits with me slightly uncomfortably as I have been one of those tourists.
Continue readingJohanna D’Arc of Mongolia (1989)
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The Melbourne Film Festival is doing a strand of films by Ulrike Ottinger this year and, not knowing anything about this director, I was drawn in by this one being set largely in inner Mongolia at a time where no western directors had previously been allowed to film there.
Continue readingThe Education of Jane Cumming (2026)
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Sad sad sad sad. I think I knew this was going to be about queer sorrow rather than joy, although I was drawn in by the period setting and Fiona Shaw.
Continue readingI Shot Andy Warhol (1996)
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What a great film! I was sure I had seen it before but I absolutely hadn’t. And what I didn’t realise was that the person who shot Andy Warhol was Valerie Solanas! I feel like a bad feminist for not putting two and two together.
Continue readingYellow Letters (Gelbe Briefe) (2026)
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This hooked me from the moment it showed a dramatic title card that made it clear that it was being filmed in Berlin but we should consider this was Ankara in Turkey.
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