If you’re into Aussie battlers, beautiful Australian scenery, cute speedy dogs, and blatantly crying your heart out in public then Runt is the film for you. 

 I don’t know if I will ever get to watch Us and the Night again given its unique formatting and distribution, but it’s quite radically put my love of film into perspective.

I’m tempted to call this a modern Macbeth.

Peter Weir’s second feature The Cars That Ate Paris (1974) has an underlying power, and it’s both due to how raw it is as a cultural and industrial satire, and how much Peter Weir’s delicate emotional trademarks manage to bleed themselves into the expression of this bizarre premise.

Memoir of a Snail is an absolute triumph, cementing Elliot as a visionary and one of the best in his field.

The Convert wasn’t perfect but its visuals and depiction of the way of life for people in Aotearoa at the time will continue to leave its mark on me.

Not so much applying brakes to the franchise as it is shifting gears, Furiosa is a triumphantly Aussie blockbuster.

While Metal Skin may be uncomfortable or even unenjoyable viewing, it is a compelling, edge of your seat story of Australia’s male-dominated, rev-head culture, where burnt rubber and women who love fast cars are drivers of the male fantasy.

Just two bros sitting around a campfire. Five feet apart. Because they can’t face reality. 

Force of Nature is an engrossing modern murder mystery regardless of whether you grew up in Victoria or not, and it does too many difficult things well to be dismissed

Insightful, hilarious yet emotional, director Ili Baré leads the audience through a surprising journey behind one of the world’s most viewed sports competitions, The Australian Open. 

Though it shoots well above its budget in terms of its production value, and features potentially star-making turns from its central actors, You'll Never Find Me winds up feeling more like a sheep in wolf's clothing, fizzling out before it can attempt to wow you with its hypnotic but overlong conclusion.

Late Night with the Devil is destined to be a halloween cult classic.

David Robinson-Smith, director of Mud Crab (MIFF 2022), returns to MIFF 2023 with We Used To Own Houses, an explosive cine-poem about the housing crisis.

If this scene and the overall use of tension represent the start of a pattern for Jack Clark and Jim Weir, I look forward to catching their next film.

Australia has been aching for a story like this, and it feels so good to finally see it. If you’re one of the lucky ones who snagged a ticket to the sold out MIFF screenings, then enjoy!

With Love to the Person Next to Me is not a perfect film, but it does have something that many films with larger budgets lack- a soul.

Talk to Me is another solid addition in the outback horror canon - a beating heart, pumping with fresh blood.

Beaten to Death is an uncompromising and particularly nasty slice of Ozploitation that mostly delivers on the bluntness of its title, with a few neat cinematic tricks up its sleeve.

We Are Still Here is aptly described by the saying “the whole is greater than the sum of its parts,” as it doesn’t particularly stand out for its technical or creative proficiencies, but rather because the message it manages is profound.