You don’t have to be in Melbourne to enjoy the Melbourne International Film Festival because there’s MIFF Play 2022 where a number of films are made available to stream (for a fee) online during the festival.
FREE TO RENT: SHORT FILM: Goodbye Jérôme! Au Revoir Jérôme!
Directors: Adam Sillard, Chloé Farr, Gabrielle Selnet
Origin: France (2021)
MIFF Shorts | Short
Language: French with English subtitles
Genre: Animation
In this funny, funky and surreal hand-drawn animation, Jérôme arrives in heaven in search of his late wife. Taking inspiration from their own romantic breakups, French co-directors Gabrielle Selnet, Adam Sillard and Chloé Farr craft a surreal and bittersweetly funny hand-drawn tale about a man who arrives in the afterlife, where he re-meets his dearly departed wife. But things are not how they were. Goodbye Jérôme won the International Jury Award for Best Short Film in the Berlinale’s Generation 14Plus section.
Jane by Charlotte Jane par Charlotte
Director: Charlotte Gainsbourg
Origin: France (2021)
Documentaries, Music on Film | Feature
Language: French with English subtitles
Genre: Documentary, Music
Charlotte Gainsbourg makes her directorial debut with this quietly revelatory portrait of her mother, Jane Birkin, offering tender insights into their relationship.
Gainsbourg (Jacky in the Kingdom of Women, MIFF 2014; Melancholia, MIFF 2011) remains a darling of the contemporary arthouse circuit, while Birkin – a celebrated singer, actor and fashion icon – has herself directed a documentary about her husband Serge Gainsbourg (Souvenirs of Serge, MIFF 2012) and been the subject of a film, Agnès Varda’s Jane B. par Agnès V. (1988). Now, the younger Gainsbourg follows in Birkin’s footsteps, trailing her mother on tour from Japan to New York, and from her Brittany coastal retreat to the Paris apartment they once shared with Serge, which has lain untouched since his death in 1991.
Director: Mahamat-Saleh Haroun
Origin: Chad (2021)
Africa & Middle East, International | Feature
Language: French with English subtitles
Genre: Drama , Social Justice
Viewer Advice: Contains high-impact violence and high-impact sexual themes.
In Chad, where religion rules with an iron fist, a teenage girl seeks to end her pregnancy.
Amina, a single mother in a conservative village, lives a hand-to-mouth existence with her daughter, Maria. When the 15-year-old reveals that she is pregnant and wants to have an abortion, Amina is initially caught between her Muslim faith and her desire to spare her child from enduring the experiences she herself suffered as a socially ostracised teenage mother. But if the latter is to be achieved, the funds must be raised – and Amina will have to call on the aid of a secret network of women.
Director: Magnus Gertten
Origin: Sweden (2022)
Documentaries | Feature
Language: English, French, Spanish, Swedish with English subtitles
Genre: Documentary , LGBTQIA+
Winner of the Berlinale’s Teddy Jury Award, this is the astonishing true story of two women who survived the horrors of WWII and smashed social taboos to pursue their love.
Nelly Mousset-Vos met Nadine Hwang on Christmas Eve 1944 in the most horrifying of places: the Nazi concentration camp for women, Ravensbrück. Instantly enamoured, the pair were later separated; after the war, they reunited and spent the rest of their lives together in Venezuela, their relationship hidden in plain sight. The truth is unearthed when Nelly’s granddaughter Sylvie finally opens a box in the attic – a treasure trove of history and a compelling personal record of bravery and romance.
Directors: Anisia Uzeyman, Saul Williams
Origin: Rwanda, USA (2021)
Bright Horizons | Feature
Language: English, French, Kinyarwanda, Swahili with English subtitles
Genre: Sci-Fi
A wildly ambitious, radically experimental Afrofuturist musical that transcends space, time and gender from visionary poet and musician Saul Williams.
Ten years in the making, this dazzlingly original, genre-defying debut from Williams and actor and playwright Anisia Uzeyman builds on the musician’s lyrical world-building and exploration of Black resistance while following in the Afrofuturist tradition of Sun Ra’s Space Is the Place and Ngozi Onwurah’s Welcome II the Terrordome. In a past, present and future Rwanda that unfolds like a dream, a young coltan miner encounters Neptune Frost, an intersex hacker who leads us down a trans-dimensional rabbit hole of post-colonial possible realities.
The Passengers of the Night Les passagers de la nuit
Director: Mikhäel Hers
Origin: France (2022)
Europe, International | Feature
Language: French with English subtitles
Genre: Drama
Charlotte Gainsbourg is the essence of Gallic cool in this moody, insouciant film from French dramatist Mikhaël Hers (Amanda).
In 1981, even as Paris explodes with optimism at the election of socialist candidate François Mitterand as president, Elisabeth (Gainsbourg, Jacky in the Kingdom of Women, MIFF 2014; Melancholia, MIFF 2011) is on the back foot: a cash-strapped, recently divorced cancer survivor who needs to provide for her two adolescent offspring. Beginning from this point of considerable conflict, Hers instead unfurls a nostalgic and quietly uplifting narrative that – following the entry of a wayward teen into the family’s lives – traces Elisabeth’s years-long journey of self-rediscovery.
Director: Alain Gomis
Origin: France, Germany (2022)
Documentaries, MIFF Play, Music on Film | Feature
Language: English, French with English subtitles
Genre: Documentary , Experimental , Music
Thelonious Monk broke the jazz mould. Here’s what happened when a French TV show tried to stuff him back into it.
On 15 December 1969, at the tail end of his European tour, legendary pianist Thelonious Monk spent two-and-a-half hours sweating on a Parisian studio stage under intense lights, filming a 30-minute episode of the French TV series Jazz Portrait. Miraculously, all the footage has survived – and now, French-Senegalese director Alain Gomis has intelligently assembled it into an uneasy, impressionistic collage that hums with postcolonial subtext.
Director Alain Gomis reveals Monk as a gentle man being provoked to his limits of politeness as dominating host Henri Renaud talks over and around his guest, sometimes resorting to unkind stereotype. Only when Monk is free to roam the keys does he elude the camera’s pitiless gaze and show why his talent was so special.
BONUS FILM: From France but not in French
Director: Amartei Armar
Origin: France, Ghana (2022)
International Shorts 1, MIFF Shorts | Short
Language: Ga with English subtitles
Genre: Drama
A moving story of two Ghanaian boys haunted by the loss of their older brother.
This compelling, Cannes-premiering short film from Ghanaian-American filmmaker Amartei Armar is set in a small Ghanaian town at the edge of a landfill site that spills into the ocean. A fisherman’s two sons, Sowah and Okai, are struggling to cope with the disappearance of their older brother following a boating expedition. Tsutsué is an affecting, powerful work propelled by amazing performances from its young leads.
We, Students! Nous, étudiants!
Director: Rafiki Fariala
Origin: Congo, France (2022)
Documentaries | Feature
Language: Sango, and French with English subtitles
Genre: Documentary
Viewer Advice: Contains depictions of violence towards animals and themes of sexual violence.
An extremely rare look at university life in the Central African Republic as four students are thrown personal and emotional curveballs on their path to a better future.
Nestor, Aaron and Benjamin and Rafiki (the film’s director) are friends and students at the CAR’s University of Bangui. They’re trying their hardest to survive in a society that is seemingly tearing itself apart at the seams: around every corner lurk danger, corruption and sexual harassment, which they must navigate along with overcrowded classrooms, romantic entanglements, and worries about money and employment. But through it all shines their hope that, one day, they can set things right.
We, Students! is the first film from the Central African Republic to screen at the Berlinale, and only the second ever piece of cinema produced in the landlocked country. Amid unrest and economic turmoil across the nation – where cameras are unfamiliar sights (Rafiki was arrested three times during production) – it’s a miracle that this film exists at all.
KEY INFO FOR MIFF PLAY 2022
WHAT: MIFF Play 2022
WHERE: Wherever you are
WHEN: Films on MIFF Play 2022 are available to rent and stream from Friday 12 August, 2022 at 9:00 AM through to Sunday 28 August 2022 at 11:59PM AEST. As soon as you press play on the majority of films, you will have thirty-six (36) hours to complete your viewing. Please note: some films have limited and specific viewing windows, please check the film’s program page for more info.
HOW: Purchase your rental access via the film links above.
HOW MUCH: Feature films cost $15 to rent on MIFF Play 2022.
Which films are you going to watch on MIFF Play 2022?
OTHER MIFF CONTENT
No dogs or Italians allowed is showing at MIFF 2022
MIFF 2022 – 18 multilingual films to see
Melbourne International Film Festival 2022: 25 Films in French
