BIFF Excitement - On the Other Side of the Glass

The Brisbane International Film Festival is on again soon (from July 30 - August 9th) and I'm very excited. After working as a projectionist behind the scenes for many years, putting together, taking apart and running festival films, it's refreshing to be able to go along and enjoy them in the cinema on the other side of the glass.

I've been scouring the website and program, trying to whittle down my choices and thought I would share some of my favourites so far.

Moon is a sci-fi thriller, and as you may have guessed, is set on the Moon. Sam Rockwell plays an astronaut completing a solo three year shift on a base there, with only two weeks left before he can go home to his family. He seems to be dealing with the isolation okay, but is starting to feel homesick. To ensure he doesn't go completely bonkers, he has a robot assistant (voiced by Kevin Spacey), that helps operate the base they're in.

One morning an alarm goes off and he heads outside to see what the trouble is. What he finds is someone who is unconscious and bears a striking similarity to himself.


That's all I know and that's all I wanna know. I'm so excited to see a fresh and up and coming director harbouring such talent, with what looks to be a fascinating story. I've been hearing really good things about this film from film buffs in the US, so fingers crossed it'll be good one. You can watch the trailer here from an earlier post.

Dead Snow is a German zombie film featuring a group of young people on a ski vacation, staying in a cabin. They've got their toboggans, their skis and of course, their booze. The twist on the zombie part is that it is Nazi zombies that are resurrected.

At first glance this may seem to be your standard hack and slash, moaning, brain-eating zombie film. However, after watching the trailer (below), I think categorizing this film may be a little trickier than that. Maybe it's just a well cut trailer, but there are a number of scenes that allude to elements of a high tension thriller, moments of comedy and of course, lots of blood. So I'm not ready to write this one off as fodder just yet, especially as it's made the cut for BIFF.



500 Days of Summer stars Joseph Gordon-Levitt, you know, the boy from 3rd Rock from the Sun? Of course he's also had other great films such as Brick, Stop-Loss, Mysterious Skin and The Lookout. In 500 Days, he meets Summer, played by Zooey Deschanel and he falls in love with her. The only problem is, she doesn't believe in love. They have 500 days together and then she leaves him. He is left to revisit each of these days to try and figure out what went wrong.

500 Days looks to be a refreshing and humourous take on the romantic comedy genre, with some laugh out loud one-liners. As the voice in the trailer says, this is not a love story, it's a story about love.



Away We Go is the latest offering from director Sam Mendes, whose past work has included American Beauty and most recently Revolutionary Road. The film is co-written by Dave Eggers (who wrote Where the Wild Things Are) and a first time writer Vendela Vida. The story centres around two thirty somethings, Burt and Verona, who discover they're about to have a child. Unprepared to be parents, they start to travel the country, stopping to see old friends, in order to try and find the best place to settle and raise their child to be.

This looks to be a warm, quirky and perhaps slightly offbeat indie comedy, with genuine and heartfelt performances. Maybe one to take the tissues to.


Some others to check out include The Cove, Eden is West, The Missing Person, Black Dynamite and The Horseman. All of the details can be found at the BIFF website. You can pick up a program from bookstores, music shops and cinemas, in particular the Regent Cinema on the Queen St Mall where you can also purchase tickets.

I'm can't wait to have a high concentration of quality films thrust before me, there's just so much to soak up! Happy viewing.