Queensland Film Festival 2016
With 40 films due to light up Brisbane screens.
Overview
Movie buffs of Brisbane, prepare to spend a good chunk of July in a darkened room. After its successful debut in 2015, Queensland Film Festival returns for another year of championing the best in international cinema — and its second annual program is even bigger.
In fact, the boutique, curated festival has doubled in size in 2016, with 40 films — aka 20 features and 20 shorts — due to light up the silver screens at New Farm Cinemas from July 15 to 24, and at the Institute of Modern Art at a pre-festival teaser on July 9. Expect everything from gems of the global festival circuit to restored greats, with 19 titles in the lineup screening in Australia for the very first time.
QFF 2016 kicks off with a slice of colourful melodrama courtesy of Pedro Almodovar's Julieta, and that's just the start of the festival's ten-day movie frenzy. A collaboration with Studio Ghibli, the dialogue-free animation The Red Turtle comes to Brisbane after premiering in Cannes, as does Morocco-based mountain travelogue Mimosas.
Elsewhere, QFF will get loud and terrifying with heavy metal horror film The Devil's Candy by Australian director Sean Byrne, delve into competitive masculinity via absurdist Greek New Wave comedy Chevalier, explore a personal essay of love, loss and a pet pooch called Lolabelle in Laurie Anderson's Heart of a Dog, and take a different look at combat via Guy Maddin's Bring Me the Head of Tim Horton.
And then there's the unsettling fable of Lucile Hadžihalilovic's Evolution, the pulpy magic of Anna Biller's The Love Witch, the Guillermo del Toro-championed mystical poetry of Chinese effort Kaili Blues, and Dead Slow Ahead's sci-fi like examination of cargo ships. If some of these titles sound familiar, that's because we've been excited about them for a while now.
Plus, because 2016 marks two very important milestones in Brisbane film history, QFF is casting its eyes back to the past as well. First, celebrate the 50th anniversary of the initial Brisbane Film Festival — which actually took place at the movie theatre that eventually became the current New Farm Cinemas — with a screening of Agnes Varda's Cleo From 5 to 7, a selection of shorts and a free discussion panel on fifty years of film fests in the Queensland capital. Then, commemorate 25 years since the now-lost Brisbane International Film Festival started by watching David Cronenberg's Naked Lunch from BIFF's 1999 program.
Information
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