The Trouble With Being Born has been withdrawn from Melbourne International Film Festival – but individual viewers should be able to decide what films they want to see.
Documentary film Welcome to Chechnya looks at the government-sanctioned torture and murder of LGBTQ people in Chechnya – and the activists trying to help them escape.
In The Meddler, Australian documentarians follow an unassuming mechanic in Guatemala City as he prowls the streets with a camera trying to capture footage of crimes and dead bodies.
Timothee Chalamet and Armie Hammer in Call Me By Your Name: an erotic romance imbued with the effervescence of a European summer.
Frenesy
MIFF 2017 made good on its promise to explore new worlds, with timely films on American civil rights, Indigenous music, and queer activism. Here’s our pick of the ones to see.
Nicole Kidman as Julie in Top of the Lake: China Girl: a control freak brought to her knees.
See-Saw Films for BBC First and Foxtel
Jane Campion’s second series of Top of the Lake, which premiered in Melbourne at the weekend, is an ominous, lyrical, genre-bending exploration of the sex trade.
Janis Joplin in a new documentary, Janis: Little Girl Blue (2015).
Disarming Films
Janis Joplin was once voted the ‘Ugliest Man on Campus’. Sharon Jones was told she was ‘too old, too fat, too short, too black’ to succeed in music. Two documentaries chart the lives of these extraordinary women.
Courtesy of the Melbourne International Film Festival
The male coming of age tale Down Under is set in the aftermath of the 2005 Cronulla riots. But while entertaining, the film doesn’t help us understand the racism at the heart of these traumatic events.