Time Out’s 17 festival picks
We’ve crunched the lineup, read the reviews and come up with our own list of must-sees. See you on the blue carpet
01 Ali’s Wedding
This Australian Muslim romcom has the neurotic, naive son of a Muslim cleric following through with an arranged marriage he wants no part of. It won the Audience Award at the Sydney Film Festival in June.
02 Brigsby Bear
Saturday Night Live cast member Kyle Mooney has co-written and stars in an oddball comedy about a young man kidnapped at birth who grows up obsessed with a fake, cheaply made children’s show.
03 Call Me by Your Name
The latest film from Luca Guadagnino ( I Am Love) is a ravishing gay romance set in Lombardy between a 17-yearold Italian American (Timothée Chalamet) and a 24-year-old intern (Armie Hammer).
04 A Fantastic Woman
A young transgender opera singer (played by a transgender actress) suffers suspicion and contempt in the wake of her older partner’s death. Chilean director Sebastian Lelio directs a fearless, impressive drama.
05 The Go-betweens: Right Here
The ’80s jangle-pop stars from Brisbane who took on the world get a documentary retelling their incredible and eventful story, by director Kriv Stenders ( Red Dog).
06 Good Time
Robert Pattinson is getting rave reviews for his performance in this heist-gone-wrong thriller playing a man who attempts a bank robbery with his intellectually disabled brother.
07 I Am Not Your Negro
Nominated for an Oscar, this doco focuses on the words of African American writer James Baldwin, read by Samuel L Jackson, and the struggles for equality of the 1950s and 1960s.
08 The Killing of a Sacred Deer
The new thriller by Yorgos Lanthimos ( The Lobster) won an award for its screenplay at Cannes. Colin Farrell stars as a surgeon whose mysterious meetings with a teenage boy (Barry Keoghan) he keeps secret from his ophthalmologist wife (Nicole Kidman). A slow-burning shocker, it also features a cameo by Alicia Silverstone ( Clueless).
09 Loveless
Russian director Andrei Zvyagintsev ( Elena) contributes a powerful and despairing film in which the misery of a soon-to-be divorced couple is compounded by the disappearance of their son.
10 Marlina the Murderer in Four Acts
From Indonesia comes a modernday feminist western in which a widow takes vengeance upon the bandits who threaten to take all her possessions and rape her.
11 The Party
The new film from UK auteur Sally Potter is a real-time farce set at a dinner party, with Kristin Scott-thomas, Timothy Spall, Patricia Clarkson and Cillian Murphy.
12 Patti Cake$
Aussie Danielle Macdonald stars in this American indie about an overweight white girl trying to make it as a rapper.
13 Pop Aye
An elephant called Bong emerges as the latest star of Thai cinema in this offbeat road movie critiquing the rush towards change in the developing world.
14 Song to Song
The new film from Terrence Malick ( Days of Heaven) is a romantic drama starring Ryan Gosling, Rooney Mara, Natalie Portman, Cate Blanchett and Michael Fassbender, with cameos from music icons Iggy Pop, Florence Welch and Patti Smith.
15The Square
From Swedish director Ruben Östlund ( Force Majeure), The Square is a satire of the art world starring Dominic West, Elisabeth Moss and Claes Bang that took out the top prize, the Palme D’OR, at Cannes in May.
16 Top of the Lake: China Girl
The entire second season premieres at MIFF before its TV premiere on Foxtel. Detective Robin Griffin (Elisabeth Moss) has returned to Sydney and is trying to rebuild her life when the body of an Asian girl washes up.
17 Wonderstruck
Julianne Moore and Michelle Williams star in the new film from Todd Haynes ( Carol, I’m
Not There), which concerns two deaf children who run away from home, 50 years apart.