Melbourne Documentary Film Festival takes over July with a stacked slate of fascinating true stories
a-ha: The Movie headlines Melbourne Documentary Film Festival
The Melbourne Documentary Film Festival (MDFF) returns for its seventh year with a brand-new batch of thought-provoking documentaries from all over the world.
For Documentary Month, the film festival runs online from July 1–31 and in-cinema at Cinema Nova July 21–31. Among 120+ documentaries, the festival showcases some of the greatest exports to come from international festivals, including Venice, SXSW, CPH:DOX, Doxa, Hot Docs, Tribeca, Freep, Telluride and Santa Barbara.
Patou: In Black and White will open MDFF, along with two shorts: Angel and Making Wonder. Jamaican singer Pat Powell (PATOU) is one of Australia’s most accomplished performers, with a career spanning 40 years – yet fails to get the recognition he deserves. This documentary feature, from AACTA-nominated director Fiona Cochrane (Four of a Kind), seeks to change that.
If the 1980s smash-hit Take On Me is in any of your playlists, add a-ha: The Movie to your watchlist. This film tracks the Norwegian band over four years on tour to uncover how three young men followed their dream to make it big. It was nominated for the Audience Award at the Tribeca Film Festival and the Grand Jury Prize for Best Music Documentary Feature at Nashville Film Festival. With a screenplay by co-director Thomas Robsahm (BAFTA-nominated producer of The Worst Person in the World), you’ll be tapping your feet to the beat of nostalgia.
Waterman examines the legacy of Olympic champion and local Hawaiian hero Duke Paoa Kahanamoku
Is sport more your speed? Isaac Halasima’s (The Last Descent) Waterman tows us through the wavy waters of surfing legend Duke Paoa Kahanamoku – the ‘Ambassador of Aloha’ – exploring how the five-time Olympic medallist became a Hawaiian icon and an American hero, in spite of personal challenges. The New Zealand production is narrated by Aquaman star Jason Momoa.
Learn more about an acting icon than you ever knew before in Daniel Day-Lewis: The Hollywood Legend. The highly selective and critically-acclaimed three-time Oscar-winner never stopped pushing the envelope in a career spanning just 20 films and this documentary, from French director Nicolas Maupied, harks back to the roots of a family mythology in which the actor is the last hero, in spite of himself.
Other thoughtful stories that are sure to pull on your heartstrings include A Certain Mother, a film that follows four Australian women in the throes of motherhood; Ida Lupino: Gentlemen & Miss Lupino, a look beyond the camera lens at English-American actress, singer, writer, producer and groundbreaking director Ida Lupino; and Kímmapiiyipitssini: The Meaning of Empathy, an intimate portrait of community and the overdose epidemic in the Kainai First Nation from award-winning filmmaker Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers.
Ida Lupino: Gentlemen & Miss Lupino examines the life of a multi-hyphenate trailblazer of the arts
Meanwhile, Cinema Nova hosts an advance screening of Canada’s Eternal Spring (Jason Loftus) on July 20 at 6.30pm. The partially animated documentary explores the 2002 Falun Gong hijacking of broadcast television stations and police raids in Changchun, which forced comic book illustrator Daxiong (Justice League, Star Wars) to flee to America. Twenty years on, themes of defiance and determination to stand up for political and religious freedoms prove popular with audiences, as evident after the 2022 Hot Docs Canadian International Film Festival where Eternal Spring won the Audience Award.
There are also free events during MDFF. You can catch Cats of Malta at 6:30pm on Monday July 25 at Federation Square. The film celebrates Malta’s stray cats and the people who care for them through volunteering, art and folklore. Rob Layton’s short Beneath the Lonesome Skye! also screens under Melbourne’s night sky.
Closing the festival is the world premiere of Craig Miller’s Cuba My Soul. Described as a musical odyssey into the soul and rhythm of a nation, the Australian documentary explores the life, past and present, of traditional Cuban music.
Documentaries enlighten, move and ignite. There is no shortage of inspiring topics to choose from at the Melbourne Documentary Film Festival – the film event for all punks, rebels, mavericks and renegades.
