Alright, sports film fans. This is the big one. The 63rd annual Melbourne International Film Festival kicks off at the end of this month, and now it’s time to get a full look at what’s in store. The 2014 Program was launched in full last night, and it’s a veritable smorgasbord of cinematic goodness, featuring a staggering 341 films sourced from 52 countries around the world.
Along with previously announced opening night feature Predestination – a time-travelling thriller starring Ethan Hawke – MIFF unveiled its closing night screening in locally made Felony – a crime thriller about three detectives pitted against each other starring Joel Edgerton, Melissa George, Tom Wilkinson and Jai Courtney. Speared in the middle of the festival too is Centrepiece Gala feature Cut Snake, set in a 1970s-era Melbourne.
Highlights of the program include the typically excellent Backbeat music documentary section, this year including Pulp: A Film About Life, Death and Supermarkets about iconic Britpop band Pulp’s reunion tour, Heaven Adores You chronicling the work of the late Elliott Smith through the three cities he had home bases in – New York, Los Angeles and Portland – and Time is Illmatic, which tells the story behind hip-hop artist Nas‘ genre defining album Illmatic.
Other individual highlights include Happy Christmas, from the director of last year’s excellent Drinking Buddies and starring Anna Kendrick; The Skeleton Twins starring Bill Hader, Kristen Wiig and Luke Wilson; a documentary on the decision to overturn the ban on same-sex marriage in California entitled The Case Against 8; wildly unique French director Michel Gondry‘s animated conversation with Noam Chomsky in Is The Man Who Is Tall Happy?; and Happiness, which follows the introduction of television into a small village in Bhutan.
The Festival this year is opening up some new, and revisiting some old, venues in the wake of the closing of the Russell Street Greater Union. The Festival hub will once again be at the Forum Theatre, with other venues including the usual Kino Cinema, ACMI, and Arts Centre, with Melbourne Central Hoyts now shouldering some of the load, and the Treasury Cinema and Capitol Theatre being used for the festival for the first time in years.
The full program hits the web on Friday, and the print version will be included with Friday’s edition of The Age. Tickets for all films go on sale on the same day.
Check out all the vital details over at MIFF.com.au
