Upcoming film festivals in Melbourne

The MIFF vision is nothing less than to "build an enlightened, engaged society through film". Under director Michelle Carey, this aim is carried out through a program of hundreds of fascinating films from around the world. The festival has been kicking around since 1952: it's not only one of the oldest film festivals in Australia, it's also one of the most popular. The festival shows off international features, arthouse films, documentaries and shorts. Kids aren't forgotten about either with the festival regularly including family friendly films from across the world. If you're just wanting to go watch that one special film then you can, but movie buffs are better off buying buying a festival pass to be granted entry to all showings. The opening night film has been announced as Wildlife – the directorial debut of US actor Paul Dano, co-written with his partner Zoe Kazan, about a teen whose family is falling apart in Montana in the 1960s. Australia’s prodigious Ed Oxenbould (Paper Planes) stars alongside Carey Mulligan. Veteran filmmaker Paul Schrader (Cat People) has been getting his best reviews in decades for the Cannes hit First Reformed, starring Ethan Hawke. Chloë Grace Moretz stars in Desiree Akhavan’s second feature The Miseducation of Cameron Post, about attempts to ‘cure’ a lesbian teen. Cannes 2017 Best Actor winner Joaquin Phoenix features in Lynne Ramsay’s taut revenge flick You Were Never Really Here, playing a war vet whose job includes rescuing children from

More than 45 local features and shorts, along with Oscar-nominated short films, will be screening at Cinema Nova as a part of a series of events presented by AACTA in August and September. On Tuesday August 21, 6.30pm the Oscars Short Film Program will screen. This is an exclusive showcase of the ten shorts that were nominated for the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences' animated and live action short film categories this year. They include an Australian nominee for Best Live Action Short, Derin Seale and Josh Lawson's 'The Eleven O'Clock'. On Wednesday August 22 AACTA's Melbourne Masterclass in Web Series Creation will draw upon some of the country's most successful web content creators and developers to share their expertise in creating scripted content for online audiences worldwide. Then Thursday August 23 will see the AACTA Short Film Program shown on the big screen – this year's nominees for Best Australian Short Film and Best Australian Animated Short, with winners to be announced at the AACTAs in December. Later on in September the AACTA Film Fest will warm up for the awards season with screenings of 38 Australian films from the past year, many of which are exclusive screenings or films yet to be released (such as the pictured Ladies in Black). All films are competing for nominations for the 8th AACTA Awards, so you can get a snapshot of the high calibre and diversity of Australian cinema, including such gems as Upgrade, Sweet Country, Cargo and Swinging Sa

Once a month Australian films play the lead role at Eaglehawk’s Star Cinema. In 2018 the cinema is hosting a year-long festival called Australia on Screen to celebrate the nation’s creative film industry. On the fourth Tuesday of every month the cinema is screening an Australian film, and tickets are just $11. These aren’t your major blockbusters: the Australia on Screen event puts the spotlight on some of Australia’s lesser-known films, highlighting those with a strong connection to regionality and place. From February 27 to November 27 catch films like Love Serenade, Monkey Grip, Walkabout and Celia. For the true Aussie film fans Star Cinema is also hosting a three-day film forum from June 1 to June 3. To buy tickets to the monthly screenings or film forum call 03 5446 2025.

Lots of cathartic crying, attractive stars and supernatural suspense: Korean cinema doesn't muck around when it comes to what's fun in movies, and the annual Korean Film Festival in Australia is always a highlight of the cinema year. The KOFFIA is run by the Korean Culture Centre Australia, which offers public education programs about the Republic of Korea throughout the year. The 2018 film festival will be the ninth, with 22 feature films to be screened (all with English subtitles). Opening night film is Little Forest, a feelgood film about a young women who leaves the big city to return to her rural hometown, while closing night's Microhabitat is a slice of life about a 31-year-old housekeeper who tries to live by couch surfing with her old college friends. A nice'n'nasty chunk of K-horror arrives in the form of Gonjiam: Haunted Asylum, in which a team explores an allegedly haunted asylum for a YouTube horror web-series and gets more than they bargained for.  A dark Korean take on Groundhog Day, A Day is about a surgeon who must re-live the traumatic morning of his daughter's death over and over again.   Cop buddy comedy Midnight Runners has a dumb jock and a shy bookworm becoming best friends at the academy and launching their own investigation into a kidnapping. The fantasy Glass Garden concerns a PhD student with a gift for communicating with nature who gets the attention of a novelist.  Be With You is a poignant supernatural love story in which a deceased mother