South Australian director Matt Vesely worked with a development lab and funding specifically for first-time feature directors to create a film on a defined, small budget to create this tense, one room, one character, sci-fi thriller.
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I was waiting in the lounge of the Capitol cinema, when a previous screening of this homegrown documentary finished. The foyer filled with a joyful throng of participants and their families, whose faces I now recognise for their starring turns in Thomas Highland’s skilful documentary.
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This smart, funny, and scary exploration of toxic relationships was a delightful surprise.
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This thoroughly enjoyable schlock horror game show pastiche is, as my MIFF buddy Not a Sexy Vampire aptly calls it, “the Don Lane show gone to hell.”
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Isabel Darling’s The Carnival reminded me of a particular ilk of great Australian documentary storytelling, like Maya Newell’s Gayby Baby (2015) and In My Blood it Runs (2019) and Justine Moyle’s Tall Poppy (2021). The storytellers find a subject or a family who seem absolutely ordinary and build a rapport that allows them to tell the story of how they are extraordinary.
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On the surface, this is a story of a woman trying to leave an abusive marriage, but it shines a light on the insidiousness of domestic violence and its roots in patriarchy.
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My mum was politically conservative. She and my dad were Liberal voters but I still remember the yellow triangular No Dams sticker on her car.
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A gentle love letter to Melbourne that will make you look up with a new appreciation of what you probably walk past every day.
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Granaz Moussavi has followed up her 2009 hit My Tehran for Sale with an intimate look at street kids in Kabul.
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