Ever present
MELBOURNE INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2026
ACMI
THE CAPITOL
FORUM
HOYTS
KINO
Thursday 6th – Sunday 23rd August, 2026
A visual record of what was, 47-films deep. A scrapbook of lately, for tradition.
In compiling this, I realised my numbering system went awry from the fourth film. At the end of MIFF, I thought I’d attended 44 films, but it turns out I’d seen a further three. The blur started early, this year. 47, chiefly gems.
Friday 7th August
Film 1, Flies (Moscas), Dir. Fernando Eimbcke, 2026,
Film 2, To Hold a Mountain (Planina), Dir. Biljana Tutorov, Petar Glomazić, 2026
Our annual Melbourne International Film Festival holiday begins in the black and white velvety tones of a Mexico City apartment, with Flies, followed by seasonal shifts and dancing light in Montenegro’s Sinjajevina alpine range, in To Hold a Mountain.
But before we disappear into the hug of cinema, time to check on and gambol with Lennon, Sandy, and Wallaby.
Perfect start, on all fronts.
Saturday 8th August
Film 3, Dry Leaf (ხმელი ფოთოლი), Dir. Alexandre Koberidze, 2025
Film 4, Back Home (Hui Jia), Dir. Tsai Ming-liang, 2025
Film 5, Yellow Letters (Gelbe Briefe), Dir. Ilker Çatak, 2026
A Clarice Beckett dream state is evoked in the painterly blur of a three-hour film created on an old Sony Erickson mobile. In the contemplative quiet, letting go of sharp focus and the fast pace, frame after frame, a composition to paint or draw or remember. In the soft-edged surrender, a puppy rolls in the grass, a donkey appears by a church, and kindness is always to be shown to stray dogs. Soap suds and water on a car’s widow pane dissect and ripple the scene further; “time will pass”, collapse is inevitable, but not yet.
Let’s fragment in the pixilation.
Sunday 9th August
A last days interlude: Entanglements with Fungi: Life, Death and Renewal, curated by Dr Felicity Spear, at WAMA, is on until Sunday the 30th of August, 2026.
Today the artists invite you to imagine the underlying structures and networks within nature that shape and connect ecosystems. What might be revealed in the intricate entanglements between fungi, plants, and the wider living world? What might it feel like to see, hear, or smell through the senses of other species? The artists ask you to imagine what it might feel like to be something other than human.
— Dr Felicity Spear
Monday 10th August
Film 6, The Tale of Silyan (Приказната за Силјан), Dir. Tamara Kotevska, 2025
Film 7, Gabin, Dir. Maxence Voiseux, 2026
Film 8, The Education of Jane Cumming, Dir. Sophie Heldman, 2026
Film 9, Hen, Dir. György Pálfi, 2025
Film 10, Past Future Continuous (گذشته آینده استمراری), Dir. Morteza Ahmadvand, Firouzeh Khosrovani, 2025
Ten films deep, and fable-soaked, of course, after spending time with Nikola and an injured white stork named Silyan in North Macedonia (in The Tale of Silyan), followed by the poetry of seeing two figures dancing independently before two different surveillance cameras installed in their home in Tehran, which serve as a portal for their daughter, Maryam (in Past Future Continuous), we accepted a Wildlife Victoria rescue case on the way home. Pulling at the connecting threads and exploring the more-than-human, on the screen, and beyond, we looked for a ringtail possum seen (earlier in the day) being attacked by birds and looking wet and bedraggled. It was indeed a long shot that they’d still be in the same place (at the time we accepted the case on the WV portal), but we went on a ‘what if’. A ‘what if’ is not unlike our film choices. So far, there is a distinct agricultural leaning, with memory and what remains, binding things neatly together. Who knows what tomorrow’s sessions will bring. Either way, we hope the little ringtail is okay, and has found a safe place to dry off.
Jostling alongside the film posters and stills, additional storks courtesy of a print by Theo van Hoytema, 1902, and anonymous, 1560–1585.
Ringtail possum pictured near Jolimont Station courtesy of the MoP (member of the public), to give context to our peering.
Three Clarice Beckett (1887–1935) details, October morning, c. 1927, oil on canvas on board; Beaumaris seascape, c. 1925, oil on cardboard; and Motor lights, 1929, oil on board.
Wednesday 12th August
Film 11, Black God, White Devil (Deus e o Diabo na Terra do Sol), Dir. Glauber Rocha, 1964
Film 12, Six Months in a Pink and Blue Building (Seis Meses En El Edificio Rosa Con Azul), Dir. Bruno Santamaría Razo, 2026
Film 13, Eight Bridges, Dir. James Benning, 2026, alongside the short, Forever…Forever, Dir. Johann Lurf, 2026
MIFF continues with timely advice to be mindful of people who require you to walk on your knees whilst promising to turn boulders into bread (Black God, White Devil), and never forgo the chance to sit by the river, contemplating the clouds overhead, even if or especially if the day is grey and the overpass is congested (Eight Bridges, accompanied by the mesmerising short, Forever…Forever, serving as a ninth bridge).
Thursday 13th August
Film 14, Whispers in the Woods, Dir. Vincent Munier, 2025
Film 15, Shape of Momo (Chhora Jastai), Dir. Tribeny Rai, 2025
Film 16, All of a Sudden (Soudain) Dir. Ryūsuke Hamaguchi, 2026
Film 17, Tilaï, Dir. Idrissa Ouedraogo, 1990
In Busan, we’ve made misshapen momos, and curled up on a rock alongside a smaller rock also in the shape of a momo (Shape of Momo), been banished from a village (Tilaï), discussed capitalism on a night shift at 3am, and found vertical-ness in the body again, in the slow unfold of All of a Sudden. But if there was one film we’d particularly like to nestle within, it has to be Whispers in the Woods, awaiting the apparition of hazy silhouettes, in a forest where “whispers intermingle, [and] the trees also listen to the birds.”
Listening for the ancient glug-glug call of the Capercaillie, the largest member of the grouse family. Waiting to catch sight of the bright red band that runs atop their eyes, from the hide, “allowing the forest to overwhelm us with its languages, textures, smells, and sounds.” (vincentmunier.com)
Behold! The eyes of an Eurasian lynx. Positioned much closer together than anticipated, rimmed white, and focused, what a marvel. And with a bobbed tail reminiscent of Arthur. A fleeting glimpse. It’s all in the dreamlike waiting.
(At home, we check the overnight trail camera footage of Coco Spinifex, the ringtail possum, and it reveals that she is indeed ready for release! Ready to be wild again, like the cinematic squirrels.)
Friday 14th August
Film 18, Whispers in May (Chun Ri Huan You), Dir. Dongnan Chen, 2026
Film 19, The Cycle of Love, Dir. Orlando von Einsiedel, 2026
Film 20, Jauja, Dir. Lisandro Alonso, 2014
Dissolving into MIFF again. Disappearing in the poetic abstraction of a hybrid documentary, into the remote Liangshan mountains of China with Qihuo and her two best friends (Whispers in May), and learning of unseen monsters and real fables.
Also in an altered state, three plates that will be layered to make one image of a memory of Raisin, the Tawny frogmouth we recently raised to release. (More on this to come. So exciting, @australianprintworkshop!)
Monday 17th August
Film 21, Parallel Tales, Dir. Asghar Farhadi, 2026
Film 22, Super Nature, Dir. Ed Sayers, 2025
Film 23, Nuisance Bear, Dir. Gabriela Osio Vanden, Jack Weisman, 2025
Film 24, The Story of Documentary Film (Part 2), Dir. Mark Cousins, 2026
Film 25, Tristan Forever, Dir. Loran Bonnardot, Tobias Nölle, 2026
Film 26, Death of a Shaman, Dir. Dan Jackson, 2026
Into the moment. Into the this, here, right now. Into the present tense with The Story of Documentary Film, part 2. Frederick Wiseman’s Titicut Follies (1967) is assembled alongside Agnès Vada’s hands encircling cars in the traffic gleaned through the windscreen (The Gleaners and I, 2000), and 1970s environmental documentaries by Noriaki Tsuchimoto. Roll on with the promise of part 3.
Zooming in on the map, lured by the promise of Northern Rockhopper Penguins on Tristan da Cunha, and the sound they make as they thwock-thwock-thwock, pad-pad-pad. The endangered species found in the Tristan Da Cunha archipelago (located in the central South Atlantic Ocean approximately midway between South Africa and South America) makes a fleeting appearance in Tristan Forever, but leaves a mark.
On the heels, the polar bear, ancient and of the past, trying to navigate the future, and the noisy maze of the human world. Where the forest peters out and the town begins, the sight of yellowed polar bears, looking for their next meal at rubbish dumps, as they await the ice to arrive (in Nuisance Bear).
Even if you are a bear, or rather, regardless of if you are a bear or not, the body keeps score, and I am reminded of why care, when the body is unconscious (by tranquiliser dart for relocation), needs to be done with just as much consideration and awareness. The psychological and physical effects are still felt.
Time and place, collaged together, this weekend. With more to follow.
Tuesday 18th August
Film 27, La Bola Negra, Dir. Javier Calvo, Javier Ambrossi, 2026
Film 28, Congo Boy, Dir. Rafiki Fariala, 2026
Film 29, How to Divorce During the War (Skyrybos karo metu), Dir. Andrius Blaževičius, 2026
Film 30, Mary Oliver: Saved by the Beauty of the World, Dir. Sasha Waters, 2026
Film 31, The Siege of Paradise, Dir. Gar O’Rourke, 2026
In the beautiful blur of it all, a further five films to add to the tally, including the heartbreak of La Bola Negra (The Black Ball by Javier Calvo, Javier Ambrossi, known collectively as Los Javis) and a “light [to] break my wings”, and the exquisite summation of Mary Oliver: attention without feeling is merely a report. To the things we will see! beneath the “climbing moon”.
The terrible nostalgia of a lost life, the fatal feeling of having been born too late, or the restless illusion of an impossible tomorrow with the close concern of the colour of the flesh.
— Federico García Lorca (1898–1936), translated snippet from Rain
Additional image: Hilma af Klint, The Ten Largest, No 7, Adulthood, Group IV, 1907
Thursday 20th August
Film 32, Time and Water, Dir. Sara Dosa, 2026
Film 33, Better Go Mad in the Wild (Radeji zešílet v divočině), Dir. Miro Remo, 2025
Film 34, Inside Amir (Daroon-e Amir / درون امیر), Dir. Amir Azizi, 2025
Film 35, Queen at Sea, Dir. Lance Hammer, 2026
Film 36, Yesterday the Eye Didn’t Sleep (البارح العين ما نامت), Dir. Rakan Mayasi, 2026
Opening the cinematic time capsule of Andri Snær Magnason and his grandparents, Árni and Hulda, Jón and Dísa, and finding personal and planetary histories to be interwoven in Sara Dosa’s Time and Water collage elegy to glaciers. At a funeral for a glacier, Iceland’s Okjökull glacier (a glacier is defined as a living, moving mass of ice that forms on land and flows downhill), we’ve thought about the stories held within (Roni Horn’s Library of Water), Norse mythology, and the social and economic implications of glacier melt for communities worldwide.
And in the longing for interconnectedness and metamorphosis, we became a tree (in the Bekaa Valley, on the border between Lebanon and Syria) in the final frame (of Rakan Mayasi’s Yesterday the Eye Didn’t Sleep), when faced with the illusion of choice.
Friday 21st August
Film 37, The River Train (El Tren Fluvial), Dir. Lucas A. Vignale, Lorenzo Ferro, 2026
Film 38, Guided by Horses, Dir. Sean O’Reilly, 2026
Film 39, Nagi Notes, Dir. Koji Fukada, 2026
Film 40, Ha-Chan, Shake Your Booty!, Dir. Josef Kubota Wladyka, 2026
For dance! For percussive footwork! Ballroom (Ha-Chan, Shake Your Booty!) and Malambo (The River Train), and mourning, with Alice Dixon’s moonlit Silver Stocks quiver, at @dancehouse.melb (for Field Notes; more details also to come). By way of a peep at our tunnel book, How will they know there’s no-one left, currently on display at SLV, as part of World of Book (Dome Galleries, level 4). In the company of Jane Austen, Octavia Butler, Agatha Christie, Toni Morrison, Virginia Woolf. Between sessions. Between thoughts.
Monday 24th August
Film 41, Double Freedom (La Libertad), Dir. Lisandro Alonso, 2026
Film 42, Elephants in the Fog, Dir. Abinash Bikram Shah, 2026
Film 43, Rose, Dir. Markus Schleinzer, 2026
Film 44, Pressure, Dir. Anthony Maras, 2026
Film 45, The Story of Documentary Film (Part 3), Dir. Mark Cousins, 2026
Film 46, The Friend’s House Is Here (Khaneh doost injast), Dir. Hossein Keshavarz, Maryam Ataei, 2026
Film 47, Sheep in the Box, Dir. Hirokazu Kore-eda, 2026
Our @melbfilmfest holiday might be over for another year, but not before a further seven films are seen and recorded here. From a celebration of female friendship, Hossein Keshavarz and Maryam Ataei’s underground film, smuggled out of Iran, The friends house is here (followed by a Q&A at the Forum), and finding strength and resolve in the self, in the community you forge, in Abinash Bikram Shah’s Elephants in the Fog (followed by a Q&A at the Capitol), what a finalé. In a Kinnar community in Nepal, Pirati’s encounter with an elephant in the forest who shares and absorbs her grief was especially beautiful and heartbreaking. As with Guides by horses (@guidedbyhorsesfilm), animals read our vibrations as well as our faces, our body language. Lingering within Pirati finding acceptance within herself, in a film like a moving Nan Golden photograph and with parallels to the matriarchal society of elephants, and listening to birds, moss, and trees in Lisandro Alonso’s Double Freedom.
Additional details from a print by Roeland van Eynden, Drifting ice in Ochten, 1789. Additional elephants, Man on Elephant, Southern German, 18th century; Royal Elephant (detail), Antonio Fantuzzi after Rosso Fiorentino, 1542–1545; Composite Elephant, early 17th century; and Young Elephant Eating (detail), ca. 1650.
Farewell, #MIFF2026.
Image credit: “Between futurism and expressionism, bathed in a mythological light”, a film still from Sergei Eisenstein’s (1898–1946) Ivan the Terrible, 1944–1946
