The ten best films to see at MIFF this year

Australian horror filmmaker Sean Byrne resuscitated sharks’ reps earlier this year, making Jai Courtney the real deep-sea-ted monster in Dangerous Animals. All that good PR goes out the porthole with Wyrmwood director Kiah Roache-Turner’s latest offering. The fellow Aussie writer/director casts awesome Nyikina actor Mark Coles Smith and newcomer Joel Nankervis as WWII soldiers forced to fight for their lives when their warship is sunk by Japanese warplanes and a giant great white shark strikes.

There’s a touch of Twin Peaks’ surreality to the latest head-spinner from Please Baby Please filmmaker Amanda Kramer. Yellowjackets and Natural Born Killers star Juliette Lewis plays Camille, a lonely soul who falls head over wooden heels for an antique chair. So much so, she swaps places with it, inhabiting its gracefully carved curves while her human body becomes inert. When Kinds of Kindness actor Mamoudou Athie’s Olivier snaps up the seat, has he fallen for its sleek design, or for Camille’s spirited soul? As narrated by Melanie Griffith, this sounds kooky cool.

If you loved Spelling Bee, Melbourne filmmaker Kristina Kraskov’s SXSW-debuting doco might be just the ticket for you. She follows six Excel-ent young minds, from a local hero to contestants from Vietnam and Cameroon, as they compete in the Microsoft-sponsored championship for those preternaturally gifted at manipulating cells. Delving into their family backgrounds as well as their burgeoning new friendships and stressed-out crises during the Florida-held event, it all adds up to a winning formula.

Imagine if giallo maestro Dario Argento, director of the original and best Suspiria, had made a Bond film in the swinging sixties. It might have washed up like this wild offering from Belgian filmmaking couple Hélène Cattet and Bruno Forzani. Debuting at Berlinale, it casts Italian genre star Fabio Testi as a leery old man obsessing over the murder of a beautiful woman at a luxurious hotel on the glimmering Côte d’Azur. Jumping back in time, we meet him as a dashing secret agent (Yannick Renier) caught up in a diabolical scheme that ripples forwards and backwards in time.

Celebrate Christmas in July a little late with this heartwarmer of a debut solo feature from Transparent star-turned-filmmaker Jay Duplass. Co-written with his lead, Michael Strassner, the latter plays Cliff, a washed-up comedian who chips a tooth on Christmas Eve, necessitating a mad dash to find anyone willing to patch him up. Enter dentist Didi (Liz Larsen), who sorts him out with a quick fix, then bails him out again when his car is towed. What follows is a gently overwhelming May-December romance between equally lonely oddballs, only Cliff already has a fiancée…

One of Chilean cinema’s leading lights, A Fantastic Woman and Disobedience filmmaker Sebastián Lelio, returns with this feminist-fired musical. Inspired by the women-led university protests against abuse by male academics and students that swept the nation in 2018, it stars Daniela López as Julia. Buoyed by the movement, but reluctant to speak up at first as a working-class student on a scholarship, Julia soon finds her voice through song and dance in this empowering narrative that sees her stand tall alongside a sisterhood of survivors as the wave of resistance sweeps them up.

If you enjoyed the naughty misadventures of powered-up pup Krypto in Superman, go for walkies with another heroic mutt in this SXSW hit of a scary story. Told from a dog’s eye view, it’s centred on director Ben Leonberg and producer partner Kari Fischer’s very own good boy, Indy. A supernaturally observant canine, he sniffs out terrifying forces mustering around his beloved owner, Todd (Shane Jensen), after his human moves them from the city to the spooky old country house once owned by his grandfather.

Nigerian stand-up comedian Okey Bakassi stars as Azubuike, a proud shoe shop owner struggling to pay the bills in suburban Melbourne, in Kalu Oji’s glowing feature debut. Things get extra complicated when he’s reunited with his 12-year-old son, Obinna (Tyson Palmer), who has been living interstate with his white mum. While the younger man has steadfastly rejected his dad’s Igbo culture, Azubuike is determined that they can reconnect while keeping the store lights on. Also check out British-Nigerian director Akinola Davies Jr’s luminous Igbo film My Father’s Shadow.

As bad actors (and authors) continually attack the trans community in disturbingly creepy fashion, replenish your faith in humanity with this tender Sundance documentary from Italian director Gianluca Matarrese. He’s offered remarkable access to Milan’s Niguarda Hospital and the patients of Doctor Maurizio Bini, a kind and considerate man close to retirement who loves foraging for (non-toxic) mushrooms. He specialises in both gender-affirming care and fertility treatment, and empathy abounds in his calming consultations.

Palestinian filmmakers and identical twin brothers Arab and Tarzan Nasser go harder than their quirky, under Israeli occupation rom-com Gaza Mon Amour with this satirical sideswipe fusing dark comedy and revenge thriller. It follows the travails of Yahya (Nader Abd Alhay), a falafel shop worker who undergoes a traumatic experience. When he later winds up on the set of an action movie (directed by the Nassers) where real guns are supplied, rather than props, what will he do next?