Spacetember Film Festival

Overview

They both boast stars. They each look better when there's nothing else in your field of view. Darkness provides them both with their absolute best surroundings, too. We're talking about peering at space and hitting the cinema, two pastimes that are no strangers to combining — as IMAX Melbourne is celebrating with its Spacetember Film Festival.

Screening across September 2024, this film fest is all about checking out space flicks on the venue's massive seven-storey-tall screen. On the lineup: classics, recent favourites and this year's releases. Obviously, 2001: A Space Odyssey is one such movie.

When you're not communing with Stanley Kubrick's masterpiece, whether for the first or 51st time, the IMAX 1570 version of Christopher Nolan's Interstellar is another of the fest's big drawcards — and it's playing with 75-plus minutes of sequences presented in full-screen IMAX.

Screening dates and times vary across the fest until Monday, September 30; however, you can revel in footage from the moon landing with excellent documentary Apollo 11, see the dramatised Ryan Gosling (Barbie)-starring version via First Man, ponder the heavens with Jordan Peele's Nope and revisit the Oscar-winning Gravity in 3D.

There's also Brad Pitt (IF) in space in Ad Astra, alien-centric tales via Arrival and E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, kaiju battles courtesy of Pacific Rim, and the spiciest double there is thanks to the Timothée Chalamet (Wonka)-starring Dune: Part One and Dune: Part Two.