Melbourne International Film Festival Reveals First 2017 Films

Melbourne cinephiles, here's what you'll be watching come August. That's when the Melbourne International Film Festival will brighten up the city's big screens for three movie-filled weeks — and they'll have quite the stacked lineup if their first 2017 titles are anything to go by.

Fancy watching Charlie Hunnam and Robert Pattinson trek through the jungle in the excellent The Lost City of Z? Catching all six episodes of the eagerly anticipated, Nicole Kidman-starring, straight-from-Cannes Top of the Lake: China Girl? Seeing Aussie actress Emily Browning play a Melburnian in New York opposite Jason Schwartzman and the Beastie Boys' Adam Horovitz in Golden Exits? Ace, you're in luck. All three feature in MIFF's 25-title reveal, and they have company.

The world's first feature-length painted animation, an unnerving horror about brothers escaping from a cult and a Sundance-winning exploration of the citizen journalists fronting the war on ISIS are also on the bill, demonstrating the festival's usual commitment to variety. Plus, with the Sydney Film Festival about to kick off, you could say that MIFF's program sneak peek smacks of great timing, with quite the number of New South Wales-bound flicks also heading further south.

Films doing double duty at both events include the Ryan Gosling, Rooney Mara and Michael Fassbender-starring, SXSW-shot Song to Song; the brief and banter filled The Party, swoon-inducing queer romances Call Me By Your Name and God's Own Country; transgender drama A Fantastic Woman; must-see, Samuel L. Jackson-narrated doco I Am Not Your Negro; and the New Zealand horror amusement park-based Spookers — as well as Aussie efforts Ali's Wedding, Australia Day, That's Not Me, Mountain and The Go-Betweens: Right Here. And, with the fest already announcing a huge science fiction retrospective — their first in their 65-year existence — it's safe to say that it's shaping up to be quite the jam-packed  MIFF.

The Melbourne International Film Festival runs from August 3 to 20. For more information, visit the MIFF website — and check back on July 11, when the full program is announced.