MIFF Play 2021 is the at home streaming part of the Melbourne International Film Festival 2021. From this Friday, you will be able to stream films from the MIFF Play selection including these 8 French language films.
Azor
https://play.miff.com.au/film/azor/
Director: Andreas Fontana
Languages: French, Spanish with English subtitles
Countries: Switzerland, France, Argentina
A complex mystery unravels within the pressure cooker of 1980 Argentina, revealing just how dark and dirty the privileged world of money really is.
Azor is writer/director Andreas Fontana’s feature debut. When Swiss private banker Yvan De wiel’s business partner suddenly vanishes, Yvan and his wife head to Buenos Aires at a time when the dictatorship makes Argentine citizens ‘disappear’. Yvan enters the high-stakes world of the uber-elite but will he end up with blood on his hands?
The gig is up
https://play.miff.com.au/film/the-gig-is-up/
Director: Shannon Walsh
Languages: English, French, Chinese with English subtitles
Countries: Canada, France
Subtitled A Very Human Tech Doc, this timely documentary exposes the true cost of the gig economy quietly powering our everyday lives.
Shannon Walsh’s documentary The gig is up looks at the shadow economy of vulnerable workers and unpaid, often unregulated labour and the price of having everything at our convenience. The documentary presents testimonies of gig economy workers around the world together with investigations into the companies such as Uber, Deliveroo, Task Rabbit and Amazon., which are profiting from their toil.
The Monopoly of Violence/ Un pays qui se tient sage
https://play.miff.com.au/film/the-monopoly-of-violence/
Director: David Dufresne
Languages: French with English subtitles
Country: France
This timely, intelligent and emotional examination of state-sanctioned violence reveals a disturbingly universal story.
David Dufresne’s The Monopoly of Violence starts from sociologist Max Weber’s contention that the State claims the monopoly on legitimate use of physical force. This film documents, through at times shocking images, the gilet jaunes protests in France in 2018 and 2019. It also explores the varied, revealing responses of academics, lawyers, philosophers, union officials, police officers and victims of police aggression. While this particular film looks at France, it could just as easily be USA, the UK, Hong Kong or even Australia.
Moon, 66 Questions/Σεληνη, 66 Ερωτησεισ
https://play.miff.com.au/film/moon-66-questions/
Director: Jacqueline Lentzou
Langauges: Greek, French with English subtitles
Countries: Greece, France
In Jacqueline Lentzou’s exceptional feature debut, an already strained father–daughter relationship is put under pressure.
Moon, 66 Questions is a family drama from Lentzou about the father/daughter relationship between with a father and daughter who had been estranged until the father’s autoimmune disease causes him to lose control of his body and sees his daughter become his sole caregiver. However, this is not ordinary storytelling and tempers “the narrative’s difficult material with the whimsy of tarot cards, Paris’ VHS home movies and voiceover readings of Artemis’ diary, all of which bring us closer to each character’s psyche even as they hold themselves emotionally apart”.
Playlist
https://play.miff.com.au/film/playlist/
Director: Nine Antico
Language: French with English subtitles
Country: France
In this delightful slacker story, a young Parisian comic-book artist is on the hunt for stability, a career, self-confidence, love – but nothing seems to go her way.
Playlist shows the life of Sophie, a would-be graphic novelist who lands a job as a comic book published even though she doesn’t have the required qualifications for the role. Things finally seem to be falling into place until she falls pregnant and her boyfriend refuses to raise the child with her. Sophie returns to waiting tables. Filmed in black and white, Nine Antico’s Playlist is a “shaggy comedy-drama that captures the profound travails of daily life for young people in the French capital: riding the packed Métro, fielding queries from overzealous parents, sometimes-philosophical heart-to-hearts with pals, the perennial pressures of rent and bedbugs.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=focFRjrUMJ4&t=30s
(unable to find trailer with English subtitles sorry)
Sisters with transistors
https://play.miff.com.au/film/sisters-with-transistors/
Director: Lisa Rovner
Languages: English, French with English subtitles
Country: UK, France
Laurie Anderson’s Sisters with Transistors rewrites history revealing the women who made vital contributions to electronic music. Did you know it was a woman who popularised the theremin? Or that the first electronic film score was co-written by a woman? Or that the Doctor Who theme music was co-written by a woman?
The women who were previously missing from the history pages of electronic music are profiled. The documentary features considerable archival footage and offers insights and interviews.
Social Hygiene/Hygiène sociale
https://play.miff.com.au/film/social-hygiene/
Director: Denis Côté
Language: French with English subtitles
Country: Canada
Social Hygiene is Denis Côté’s witty, theatrical battle of the sexes that turns social distancing into an exercise in mutual estrangement.
Antonin stands defeated in a field, bemoaning his layabout life, as five women berate him from a healthy distance: his sister, his estranged wife, his mistress, a tax official, a motorist he has wronged. All the women want Antonin to change, but he wants to be left in peace. And the camera watches everything in calm stillness.
Humorous and deadpan, Social Hygiene skewers the long history of male entitlement through sardonic, time-period-crossing verbal duels that play out like French classical theatre.
The Witches of the Orient/ Les Sorcières de l’Orient
https://play.miff.com.au/film/the-witches-of-the-orient/
Director: Julien Faraut
Languages: Japanese, Russian, French
Country: France
The acclaimed filmmaker behind John McEnroe: In the Realm of Perfection (MIFF 2018) serves up the story of the Japanese women’s volleyball team who became icons.
The Witches of the Orient is the story of the Japanese women’s volleyball team who became icons. In the 60s, the team had an impressive 258 consecutive wins. They were referred to as the “Witches of the Orient”, an offensive moniker which they reclaimed as their own. The women inspired manga characters and anime series. French filmmaker Julien Faraut tells their story through archival footage, new interviews with the surviving team members against a dynamic electronic soundtrack from K-Raw, Jason Lytle and Portishead.
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WHAT: Melbourne International Film Festival 2021 – MIFF Play
WHERE: At home (wherever you have an internet connection)
WHEN: 5 to 22 August (once you press play on a rented film, the film is available to you for 36 hours)
HOW: Rent films via their individual links – view the MIFF Play selection at www.play.miff.com.au
HOW MUCH: All MIFF Play films cost $14 to rent.
If you’re interested in streaming other French films, you may like the following articles:
Alliance Française 2020 French Film Festival films to stream/rent online
Melbourne, you don’t have to miss out on the AFFFF 2020 films!
11 French movies from the 2019 Alliance Française French Film Festival to watch on SBS on Demand
7 French films from the AFFFF 2019 to watch for free at home
