MIFF 2022
By its very nature, film is in the business of distorting time – removing it from reality, making it meaningless, or meaningful. As we ready to return to Melbourne this August, it seems both can feel true, at once.
In 2022, we return to cinemas for the first time in a long time – our Opening Night will be our first together here in Melbourne, unbelievably, in three years. It has been a long, zigzagging, lockdown-laden road, but, incredibly, MIFF is back – and, against the odds, bigger than ever.
You’ll get nearly a whole month of MIFF this August: 18 days of cinema, 18 days of our Australia-wide digital offering on MIFF Play available at the touch of a button at your place. Not to mention a globally accessible XR platform, incredible venues right across the CBD (for the first time including IMAX as a full festival venue!), screenings in four suburban centres and nine regional Victorian centres.
Our mantra for our COVID years has been to “meet audiences where they are”, and as we welcome audiences back to the business of six films a day, we continue to recognise and to realise our new ways to connect – to the screen, and to those around us.
In 2022, we also celebrate our 70th anni- versary through an extraordinary array of cinema and special events that places MIFF at the very heartbeat of Melbourne as one of the world’s great creative cities.
Celebrate the iconic and rediscover the lost in an epic portrait of Melbourne’s cinematic history in our Melbourne on Film retro and
its accompanying book (featuring cinematic love letters and essays by an eye-popping selection of artists, creatives and writers), as well as through our MIFF Signatures project: three specially commissioned festival ID pieces that mark the moment where film and audience meet, in the inimitable voices of their acclaimed creators, Ivan Sen, Justin Kurzel and Soda Jerk.
The danger with milestones is that they tend to trap us in the mirror, leave us navel- gazing into oblivion. But this isn’t only a moment to look back, but a point we choose to look forward.
With the launch of the Bright Horizons Competition to coincide with our 70th edition, we welcome one of MIFF’s all-time festival initiatives – a jaw-dropping line-up of emerging international and Australian filmmaking talent, one that aspires to set the map alight as a must-see space for breakthrough cinema.
Whether it’s your moment to celebrate the flows of history with us, or just time to get back out of your house into a real world of imagina- tion this year, we welcome you back to MIFF.