Melbourne International Film Festival

The Good Life (La Belle Vie) is a French drama film based on a true story. It’s a delicate, coming of age tale and portrait of paternal love set in the freewheeling countryside. It asks some big questions about love and freedom. But while it is beautiful, it fails to fill in some of the…

One of the entries in MIFF’s Big Scene – Small Screen program, Doll & Em is an unassuming portrait of a friendship that succeeds with a delightful mix of undeniable heart and unobtrusive style. Doll (Dolly Wells) and Em (Emily Mortimer) have been best friends since childhood. When Doll unceremoniously breaks up with her boyfriend,…

We Are The Best! (Vi är bäst!) is a loaded title but this Swedish film is all about challenging your expectations. The movie was written and directed by Lukas Moodysson, who was adapting the graphic novel that his wife, Coco, had penned about her fictionalised teenage years. The result is a feel good, coming-of-age story…

One of the great things about Danny Boyle’s work is that it’s so damned colourful. Even when times are tough and the characters are going through hell, there’s always technicolour and light and thumping music. Ok, maybe not in 28 Days Later, but in the majority of his movies. It helps us digest some of the bleaker…

  Kicking off in Melbourne tomorrow is the annual Melbourne International Film Festival. The Iris will be bringing you tonnes of coverage from the event throughout its two-and-a-bit week run, but before it starts, on the off chance you’re still not sure what you want to see, we bring you our picks of the festival…

In 1950s upstate New York in the small fictional town of Hammond, a group of 15 year old girls band together under the weight of post-war culture which aims to crush them with its sexist, oppressive ideals. Mostly hailing from broken homes where abuse and violence are the norm, these spirited young women form a…

If Evil Dead (the original 80s version not the dodgy remake), met the Supernatural brothers in an alleyway and they got into a fight, this film would most likely emerge, dusting itself off, out of the aftermath. (aka David Wong) horror comedy is chock-a-block full of dark slapstick humour, freakishly mind boggling scenes and enough gristly gore to make one’s stomach…

Set in current day Cairo over the course of one day, Coming Forth By Day is a slow moving and bleak meditation on the life of Suad (Donia Maher) an unmarried 30-something who lives with her parents, and together with her mother (Salma Al-Najjar), looks after her ailing father (Ahmed Lutfi) . As the film…

A quietly devastating meditation on female adolescence, It Felt Like Love is the feature debut of director Eliza Pittman made on a tiny budget, and shot over 18 days in August 2012. The film opens with an awkward teenaged Lila (Gina Piersanti), childishly smeared in sunscreen at the beach. It’s this yardstick from which Lila’s character arc moves over the…