Kuessipan
The first MIFF classic on our list comes from Canadian filmmaker Myriam Verreault. Based on the Naomi Fontaine novel, it’s an emotionally charged coming-of-age story featuring two First Nations women who took very different paths in life, but still enjoy a strong bond. That’s tested when one of them brings a white partner home to their tight-knit Innu community. “It’s a beautiful story about friendship and, like most of the films we’ve chosen here, it has a strong sense of place,” says Fitzpatrick.
Pair it with at this year’s MIFF. “This is one of my favourites in the program,” Fitzpatrick says. “From Mexican First Nations experimental filmmaker Ángeles Cruz, it sees three women return to their village for very different reasons. It’s a very small but great film.”
Happy As Lazzaro
Italian filmmaker Alice Rohrwacher delivers one of cinema’s biggest jaw-dropping moments in this intensely lyrical film that follows the (mis)fortunes of hardworking villagers, extorted by the local landlady, then takes a wild twist. “What I loved about this was that you truly never knew what was going to happen next,” Jinx says. “It feels like a folktale.”
Pair it with at this year’s MIFF. “The new film by Mia Hansen-Løve (and featuring Aussie Mia Wasikowska) has that sort of film within a film idea and you’re never sure, exactly, what’s real in it.”
Chevalier
Six friends with way too much testosterone set sail on a fishing trip on the Aegean Sea in Greek writer/director Athina Rachel Tsangari’s increasingly surreal film. What could possibly go wrong? “The extreme masculinity in this film, as captured by a female director, is just so funny. It’s completely absurd by the end of the film. So good, so dark.”
Pair it with at this year’s MIFF. “This Scandi revenge comedy is hyper-masculine and uber-violent too, with Mads Mikkelsen beating the crap out of people,” Fitzpatrick suggests.
Under The Cover Of Cloud
Stand-up comedian turned filmmaker Ted Wilson also stars as a recently fired journalist looking to reconnect with his folks in Hobart, conveniently played by Wilson’s actual family in this homegrown debut. “It’s almost like an observational documentary,” Fitzpatrick says. “The real star of the film ends up being his mum. She goes off on these crazy tangents and is so endearing that you get drawn in, like you were given a seat at the kitchen table.”
Pair it with at this year’s MIFF. “Director James Vaughan edited Under the Cover of Cloud,” Fitzpatrick says. “His debut feature has a similar theme of returning home.”
Lovesong
Riley Keough and Jena Malone play besties who discover new depths to their friendship in this road trip movie from So Yong Kim. “I absolutely love this film,” Fitzpatrick says. “I mean, I love a road trip movie, and who wouldn’t want to with these two women? I’m on board with that. I love both of them very much.”
Pair it with at this year’s MIFF. “It’s about three musicians heading to a gig in Tehran when they get stuck in floods,” Fitzpatrick says. “It’s a really lovely road movie.”
Strange Colours
An exciting new voice in Australian cinema, Alena Lodkina mesmerised audiences with this story of a daughter who returns to the remote opal mining community of Lightning Ridge, trying to find some common ground with her sick father. “We haven’t had a filmmaker like her come up for a while,” Jinx says. “It was such a quiet film, but it really connects to audiences in a way that a lot of slower films don’t. Everyone I know who’s seen it just raved about it.”
Pair it with at this year’s MIFF. “It’s about a couple living in an outback town in South Australia where there aren't many opportunities, and it really captures the day-to-day banality of being 20-something with no responsibilities,” Jinx says.
Faces Places
The penultimate film from the late, incomparably great French new wave hero Agnès Varda pairs her with young photographer and street artist JR as co-director. They go on a road trip visiting regional communities, creating huge paste-up artworks depicting the people they meet along the way. “What a gift this film was,” Jinx says. “Just her riffing with JR on screen, this film really captures the level of generosity she offered in all of her films.”
Pair it with at this year’s MIFF. “The new Céline Sciamma film is a beautiful tale of a young girl dealing with the trauma and grief of her grandmother dying,” Jinx says. “She meets this other girl in the woods and they don’t expect too much of each other, much like Agnès and JR.”
Sunset Song
Agyness Deyn is mesmeric in Terence Davies’ glowing adaptation of the classic Scottish novel set in a rural village in the far north on the eve of the Great War, with a growling Peter Mullan as her hard-nosed father. “It’s a very beautiful-looking film, and kind of devastating as well,” Fitzpatrick says. “The bleakness is quite palpable, with an incredible performance by Agyness. Mullan is an indicator that it’s going to be a traumatic experience, but she really brings an ethereal quality.”
Pair it with at this year’s MIFF. “Speaking of ethereal, this offbeat comedy about a Syrian refugee trying to find his place on a remote Scottish island while still trying to connect back home is as heartbreaking as it is hilarious,” Fitzpatrick says.
I Am Not A Witch
Rungano Nyoni’s intriguing satire centres on an eight-year-old girl accused of witchcraft. She is cast out of her Zambian village and consigned to a labour camp where her fellow ‘witches’ are tethered together. “I thought this was really incredible,” Jinx says. “Capturing cultural traditions of witchcraft and how the idea is used against women and families in general, it’s sad, but still really funny and dark.”
Pair it with at this year’s MIFF. “It’s a restoration of the 1968 film by Senegalese director Ousmane Sembène, and the feature film in the Wolof language,” Jinx says. “Set in a small town, a man who has two wives, numerous children and many chickens receives a money order from his nephew, who’s living in Paris, and the effort to cash it in reveals the bureaucracy of this post-colonial town. It’s witheringly funny.”
Wildlife
Paul Dano’s directorial debut, based on the book by Richard Ford, casts an always excellent Carey Mulligan as a woman who wants more from life than her husband (played by Jake Gyllenhaal) can offer. “This couple live in a dead-end town,” Fitzpatrick says. “He’s struggling to get work and she’s kind of going off the rails as a result, almost having a nervous breakdown. All the while, it’s seen through the eyes of their son, as played by Australian actor Ed Oxenbould. It’s a really stark film, and that’s reflected in the landscape.”
Pair it with at this year’s MIFF. “Writer, director and star Nana Mensah plays a young woman who inherits a religious bookshop in the Bronx when her mother passes away,” Fitzpatrick says. “She was going to move to be with her married lover, but she begins to realise she may be better off reconnecting with her community.”
Jirga
Australian writer/director Benjamin Gilmour’s raw film depicts a soldier returning to Afghanistan to make right a terrible wrong. Shot on the hoof, occasionally under quite frightening circumstances, it’s remarkable. “It’s about him experiencing Afghanistan as a man and not a soldier, and falling in love with the landscape,” Jinx says. “It’s a very beautiful film.”
Pair it with at this year’s MIFF. “Kurdish director Hogir Hirori filmed this incredible documentary in Syria. It’s about a rescue effort for Yazidi women who’ve been kidnapped by ISIS and kept, essentially, as sex slaves,” Fitzpatrick says. “It’s a very visceral film that’s shot almost like a thriller.”
It Must Be Heaven
Endlessly expressive Palestinian writer, director and star Elia Suleiman, a dab hand for physical comedy, throws his full weight into this witty film that straddles Nazareth, Paris and North America. “It really works in with this collection’s sense of place,” Fitzpatrick says. “Wherever he goes, he sees parallels with his homeland.”
Pair it with at this year’s MIFF. “It’s a really sweet senior years love story set in Gaza that has the Israeli–Palestinian conflict as its backdrop,” Jinx says. “Oh, gosh, it’s such a beautiful film.”
