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Melbourne Science Fiction Film Festival
February 23 - February 25
Now an established annual event, the Melbourne Science Fiction Film Festival returns to Cinema Nova in February with 10 sessions of sci-fi/fantasy films.
This year’s Melbourne line-up will include 16 Australian premieres of features France, Canada, Macedonia, Sweden, The United States and The United Kingdom. The short-film roster of 12 titles includes works Chinese visual effects sector, Polish animation and three works from Australian directors.
Opening Night honours go to French director Damien Faure’s Pyramiden, starring David D’Ingéo as the lone survivor of a mass extinction event, who settles in an abandoned city only to experience new and strange phenomena. The feature will screen with the Australian short Earthrise, from director Shane Joseph Willis.Having its international premiere at the festival will be Shadows in the Desert: High Strangeness in the Barrego Triangle, a documentary from paranormal podcast duo Derek Hayes of Monsters Among Us, and David Flores of Blurry Photos. The pair explore unique stories of weird phenomena in California’s Anza-Borrego State Park, including sightings of legendary cryptids, ghostly apparitions and some of America’s most compelling UFO encounters.
Other feature films to make their first sojourn to Australian shores are:
- the dystopian action/thriller Cora, from Swedish directing duo Sonny Laguna and Tommy Wiklund;
- the sci-fi/horror romp How to Kill Monsters, from English filmmaker Stewart Sparke
- the alien invasion drama The Beehive, from Canadian indie auteur Alexander Lasheras;
- Vardan Tozija’s coming-of-age survival drama M.
In recognition of the work being done by founder Ryan Ward and his production entity Memory Pill Films, the festival will screen two films from the Manitoba-based filmmakers – Daughter of the Sun, an evocative road-movie/supernatural drama featuring teen actress Nyah Perkin, and their latest, the La Jetée-inspired short film Time Travelling Through Time.
Other short films include Limit (边界), a deep-space adventure from Chinese effects house, Helium Flash; an animation journey called Lights (Svetla) from Polish director Jitka Nemikinsová; the hilariously monstrous romance, A Kaiju Love Story, from AFTRS graduate Leo O’Donoghue; and, local filmmaker Harrison Ewart-Dart’s moving fantasy, 10 Seconds Til Midnight.