Phoenix Raei and Hugo Weaving in The Rooster.

Bounding back into theatres and online this August, the Melbourne International Film Festival (MIFF) has shared a First Glance announcement for its 2023 program, featuring an expansive selection of World Cinema, engrossing documentaries and hotly anticipated releases from the likes of Sundance, Berlinale and Toronto film festivals.

An iconic celebration of film, filmmakers and cinema, MIFF has dedicated itself for over 70 years to bringing artists and audiences together in Melbourne and to making movies matter more.

In its 71st edition, the 2023 festival event is set to dazzle audiences again with a jam-packed 18 day in-cinema program running 3-20 August, far-reaching regional showcase between 11-13 and 18-20 August and an abundance of films available to stream nationally via MIFF Play from 18-27 August.

Across World Premieres, exclusive releases, insightful filmmaker conversations and special one-off events, MIFF’s unique festival experience is designed to provide places and spaces to connect with fellow film lovers, hear from inspiring local and international guests and showcase the best films that you won’t see anywhere else this August.

On sharing the First Glance preview, Al Cossar, MIFF Artistic Director, said: “In 2023, the Melbourne International Film Festival returns for our 71st edition, bringing you essential, incredible, unexpected cinema from the whole world before us, far beyond the streamers, far beyond the multiplex – hotly anticipated works by iconic filmmakers, alongside new and breakthrough voices waiting to be discovered.”

“The release of our First Glance titles means it’s time again to get set for an August invitation back to the world of MIFF this year – a cinematic, kaleidoscopic adventuring through hundreds of filmmakers and artists you can carve your own path through; an invitation to find yourself at the movies once more.”

“With MIFF’s 2023 First Glance release, you’ll find your not-to-be-missed first taste of what to expect from the festival line-up this year. I know you’ll find there’s much to be excited about here already!”

The new slate of films unveiled today join the previously announced Opening Night Gala showcase of Sundance award-winner, Shayda, and the eagerly awaited Music on Film Gala screening of Ego: The Michael Gudinski Story. Tickets for both Gala events are on sale now.

The full MIFF 2023 program will be announced Tuesday 11 July.

Year on year, the MIFF Premiere Fund delivers a fresh array of documentary and narrative features to festival audiences with 2023 presenting another diverse crop of exciting homegrown talent.

With a commitment to supporting “Stories that need telling”, the MIFF Premiere Fund has invested in over 90 films since its inception in 2007. From beloved Australian actors to first-time directors, this year’s Premiere Fund line-up explores potent conversations around neurodiversity, the connection between art and wellbeing, our sporting identity and collective memory making.

Shayda.

As announced last month, the Premiere Fund-supported Shayda from Australian-Iranian writer-director and MIFF Accelerator alum Noora Niasari, will open the festival in a special Opening Night Galascreening on Thursday 3 August. Filmed and set in Melbourne, Cannes Best Actress winner Zar Amir-Ebrahimi (Holy Spider, MIFF 2022) anchors this Sundance Audience Award-winning portrait of a mother seeking a new life for herself and her daughter.

This Is Going to Be Big follows the students, their families and the staff of Sunbury and Macedon Ranges Specialist School in Bullengarook as they prepare to stage their school’s time-travelling John Farnham-themed musical. Told squarely from the teenagers’ perspective and documenting their experiences of autism, clinical anxiety and acquired brain injury, Thomas Charles Hyland’s feature directorial debut is an endearing, relatable tale of adolescent aspiration and the community that comes together to ensure these young voices ring out.

Hugo Weaving (Lone Wolf, MIFF Premiere Fund 2021; Measure for Measure, MIFF Premiere Fund 2019) and Phoenix Raei (Below, MIFF Premiere Fund 2019; Clickbait) play a hermit and a cop who form an unlikely connection amid crisis in the feature debut from actor turned writer/director Mark Leonard Winter (The Dressmaker; Little Tornadoes, MIFF Premiere Fund 2021). Set in stunning regional Victoria, The Rooster unfurls as a distinctive, unforgettable tale of two individuals confronting life’s challenges and discovering what hides behind the bravado.

Revered filmmaker Jeni Thornley composes a lovingly crafted, dialogue-free cine-poem from her extensive super-8 archive in Memory Film: A Filmmaker’s Diary. Set against the backdrop of radical feminism, Aboriginal land rights and widespread social upheaval, the film incorporates footage from Thornley’s earlier works Maidens, For Love or Money and A Film for Discussion. This hyper-intimate opus contemplates gender fluidity, sexual politics, the pleasure and pain of motherhood, and the desire for a world free of war and colonisation.

The Slam relives the most thrilling moments of our beloved Australian Open tennis tournament – from its humble grass court beginnings in 1970s Kooyong, through its iconic rivalries and nail-biting finals at the cutting-edge Melbourne Park, to its current status as the highest-profile sporting event in the country. Featuring interviews with players old and new (Pat Cash, Frances Tiafoe, Rennae Stubbs, Liam Broady), this heart-pumping documentary from director Ili Baré (The Leadership, MIFF 2020) explores sport’s relationship with cultural identity and social progress, athletes’ duality as heroes and humans, and the controversies courted by the Grand Slam event.

The recently established MIFF Awards will return in 2023, with a new suite of films appearing in the Bright Horizons Competition, one of the world’s richest feature film prizes, supported by VicScreen. Awarded by an illustrious panel of jurors and exclusively screening for MIFF audiences in Australian Premiere, the Bright Horizons Competition champions global breakthrough filmmaking – those first and second-time feature directors changing the map of cinema itself, with compelling new voices from Australian and World Cinema that are future masters, now not to be missed.

Many of the inaugural 2022 Bright Horizons filmmakers have continued to make their mark, following their Australian Premieres in last year’s MIFF Bright Horizons competition, including Charlotte Wells, director of the globally acclaimed and Oscar-nominated Aftersun, and Thomas M. Wright’s The Stranger, which proved a global streaming hit.

The full line-up for the 2023 Bright Horizons Competition will be unveiled at the MIFF Program Launch on Tuesday 11 July.

Winners of The Blackmagic Design Australian Innovation Award and MIFF Audience Award – together with a new award supported by Kearney Group – will also be announced at the festival’s Closing Night Gala on Saturday 19 August.

Audiences are encouraged to plan ahead, with MIFF Passes and MIFF Memberships available for purchase here.