Melbourne Festival Unveils First Selections; ‘Saving Chintu’ Finds New Buyer – Global Bulletin
variety.comPatrick Frater Asia Bureau ChiefThe Melbourne Film Festival will return to cinemas after two turbulent years caused by COVID-related disruptions – the city endured one of the world’s longest pandemic lockdowns – and will run Aug 4-21, 2022.
It will open with powerful Australian-U.K.-Serbian-made first film “Of An Age,” by renown shorts director Goran Stolevski.
Festival organizers pitch it as “a heart-meltingly tender, quintessentially Melbourne queer coming-of-age tale that will make you swoon from beginning to end.” The MFF is scheduled to close with another Aussie title, documentary “Clean.” Directed by Lachlan McLeod, it examines how so-called trauma cleaner Sandra Pankhurst responded to an unseen world with radical kindness.
The festival has also teased some of the titles that it will program between the gala bookend events. They include: Kamila Andini’s “Yuni”; Ari Folman’s “Where Is Anne Frank”; John Hughes and Tom Zubrycki’s “Senses of Cinema”; Ulrich Seidl’s “Rimini”; Hong Sang-soo’s “The Novelist’s Film”; Charlotte Gainsbourg’s “Jane by Charlotte”; and First Nations anthology film “We Are Still Here.” The full line up will be unveiled on July 12. “Saving Chintu,” a short film which had a glittering festival career and was a contender for the 2021 Oscars, has been picked up by India’s largest streaming platform Disney+ Hotstar, after a deal with Amazon Prime fell through.
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