By Derek Schlennstedt
Throughout September and October, the Melbourne International Film Festival (MIFF) presents the MIFF Travelling Showcase which will feature special screenings of MIFF Premiere films at Belgrave Cameo.
The films Jungle, The Song Keepers and The Butterfly Tree, plus Swedish feature Sami Blood, will all screen at Belgrave Cameo and will also include special guest appearances by cast and crew at Q&As.
Each movie is a masterpiece of its own and all have esoteric themes which they feature.
Jungle, the MIFF 2017 Opening Night film, sees Daniel Radcliffe join Wolf Creek and Bendigo director Greg McLean in the Bolivian rainforest for a gloriously tense survival thriller based on the bestselling real-life story of adventurer Yossi Ghinsberg.
The plot follows a 22-year-old Israeli backpacker in the early 1980s and his two friends – Swiss teacher Marcus Stamm and American photographer Kevin Gale.
The three set off from the Bolivian city of La Paz on what is supposed to be the adventure of a lifetime. Leading the way into the uncharted Amazon is Austrian expat Karl Ruprechter who had met the friends just days before and claimed to be familiar with the region.
But their dream trip soon turned into a wilderness nightmare from which not all of the men return.
Another movie to be featured at the Cameo is the Butterfly Tree which sees Melissa George return to Australia to star alongside Ewen Leslie and Ed Oxenbould in a visually sumptuous coming-of-age tale of love and loss tinged with magical realism.
Working from her Australian Writers’ Guild award-winning script, first-time filmmaker Priscilla Cameron crafts an intimate, slightly hyper-real story about the sometimes rocky path it takes to learn the true meaning of love.
The story begins when 13-year-old Fin meets Evelyn, a florist with a radiant appetite for life.
Fin is drawn into her spellbinding world of plants and insects and it seems the perfect place to escape his ongoing grief over the death of his mother.
But as Fin’s feelings for Evelyn bloom into a confusing mix of teenage desire and misplaced maternal love, it sets the stage for a showdown with his equally struggling father, Al – especially when it becomes clear that Al is also falling for Evelyn.
The third movie the Song Keepers is directed by award-winning filmmaker Naina Se and is Central Australia’s answer to the Buena Vista Social Club.
Documenting the preparations and first international tour by the Central Australian Aboriginal Women’s Choir, the film captures the highs and lows of these remarkable women sharing their music and stories of cultural survival, identity and inclusive cross-cultural collaboration with the world.
Last but not least, Sami Blood, the striking directorial debut and Venice Film Festival award-winning work from Swedish filmmaker Amanda Kernell, is a female coming-of-age story set against the little-discussed social prejudices of 1930s Sweden, told with an emotional power that will resonate with audiences universally.
Reindeer-herding Sami teenager Elle-Marja is sent to a boarding school designed to make its Indigenous students “acceptable” to white Swedish society where she excels with her fierce intelligence.
Newcomer Lene Cecilia Sparrok gives a wonderfully exuberant performance as a teenager who is torn between her forced desire to assimilate and burgeoning sense of self, while Kernell beautifully articulates adolescent anxiety and the impact of prejudice when one culture seeks to deny another.
These movies, which have been hand chosen by Miff judges, are all a part of the MIFF Travelling Showcase and will screen at the Belgrave Cameo between Friday 1 September and Sunday 3 September.
