Overview
When you've already got 2023's Cannes Film Festival Palme d'Or-winner and Venice International Film Festival Golden Lion recipient on your lineup, what comes next? If you're the Brisbane International Film Festival, you fill out your just-announced full program with impressive flicks from fests around the world, and featuring beloved talents. Two big standouts: All of Us Strangers, as led by Fleabag's Andrew Scott and Aftersun's Paul Mescal — plus Taika Waititi's new movie Next Goal Wins. Both join a bill that'll show River City cinephiles 42 features and 18 shorts across 11 movie-filled days in October and November.
When it arrives for 2023 from Thursday, October 26–Sunday, November 5 — taking over various Reading, Dendy and Five Star cinemas around Brisbane — BIFF will see the two of the internet's boyfriends grace its screens in the newest effort directed by Weekend and Lean on Pete's Andrew Haigh. Heading to the fest fresh from premiering at Telluride, All of Us Strangers adapts Taichi Yamada's 1987 novel Strangers.
As for Next Goal Wins, it will close out BIFF 2023 with a comedy based on the 2014 documentary of the same name. The details might ring a bell if you're a fan of soccer and you remember the American Samoan team's big 2001 defeat. Competing against Australia in a qualifying match two decades back, the squad lost 31–0. Cue the hiring of Dutch American coach Thomas Rongen, who Michael Fassbender (X-Men: Dark Phoenix) plays in Waititi's movie.
Also a massive highlight: BIFF becoming the latest Australian festival to show Strange Way of Life, aka the most-anticipated short of the year. As well as featuring The Last of Us favourite Pedro Pascal, the 30-minute flick is the newest work by inimitable Spanish filmmaker Pedro Almodóvar (Parallel Mothers) and co-stars Ethan Hawke (Moon Knight).
Other newly unveiled standouts span May December, which hails from Carol filmmaker Todd Haynes, is led by Natalie Portman (Thor: Love and Thunder) and Julianne Moore (Sharper), and dives into a scandal — and also The Royal Hotel from Casting JonBenet and The Assistant helmer Kitty Green, which turns doco Hotel Coolgardie into an Aussie thriller featuring Julia Garner (Ozark) and Jessica Henwick (Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery). Hugo Weaving (Love Me) also pops up in that, as well as in The Rooster, which follows a hermit and a cop who form a bond during a crisis.
Or, Brisbane movie lovers can check out Housekeeping for Beginners from You Won't Be Alone and Of an Age's Goran Stolevski; German filmmaker Wim Wenders (Submergence) heading to Japan with Perfect Days; Earth Mama, an A24 release by Grammy-nominated music video veteran Savanah Leaf; birth/rebirth, which riffs on Frankenstein just as the already-unveiled Poor Things does; and Smoke Sauna Sisterhood, a documentary about an Estonian log-cabin sauna.
Riceboy Sleeps spends time with a Korean single mother and her son as they start a new life in Canada in the 90s, while Sunflower spins a coming-of-age tale in the Melbourne suburbs — and Australia's You'll Never Find Me centres on a caravan resident, a surprise visitor and a thunderstorm.
The list goes on, complete with You Should Have Been Here Yesterday's look at the early days of Aussie surf culture, the Randall Park (Strays)-directed comedy Shortcomings and homegrown festive comedy A Savage Christmas, plus retrospective sessions of 1950'sThe Munekata Sisters, 1963's Contempt and 2002's Rabbit-Proof Fence.
And, there's the previously announced Uproar, the New Zealand feature opening the fest; Palme d'Or-anointed Anatomy of a Fall, French director Justine Triet's (Sibyl) drama about an author (Sandra Hüller, Toni Erdmann) accused of her husband's murder; and Hirokazu Kore-eda's Monster, the prolific helmer's latest on a lengthy resume that also includes Shoplifters and Broker.
Also already added to the lineup: the aforementioned Poor Things from The Favourite's Yorgos Lanthimos; body-horror film Tiger Stripes, which is set in the Malaysian jungle and won the 2023 Cannes Critics' Week Grand Prize; the talk show-set horror Late Night with the Devil; and The Ending Goes Forever: The Screamfeeder Story, focusing on of Brisbane's 90s indie-music favourites.
"Our film festival brings a diverse perspective from filmmakers all around the world, and we are proud to be able to showcase these voices and their stories. This program is ambitious and has a strong vision of stories that will make you think and perhaps look at the world in a different way," said BIFF CEO Luke Wheatley, announcing the full program.
"These are films from emerging and established filmmakers at their best and I cannot wait to sit in the cinema and share these."
The 2023 Brisbane International Film Festival runs between Thursday, October 26–Sunday, November 5 at selected Dendy, Reading and Five Star cinemas around Brisbane. For further information, or to buy tickets, head to the festival website.