Screens — Inside the Yellow Cocoon Shell, Tiger Stripes, No Bears and more (Special MIFF 2023 Edition)
By Adolfo Aranjuez
The Melbourne International Film Festival (MIFF) is back in cinemas on 3–20 August and online on 18–27 August! In this special edition of Screens, co-published on MIFF’s in-house publication Revue, I attempt the herculean task of juggling my two hats as Liminal’s publication editor + resident square eyes and as MIFF’s publications and audience development manager. Let’s see how we go!
Don’t forget, too, that Liminal and MIFF have partnered to offer you $12 community-price tickets. There are some still up for grabs, so email community@miff.com.au to get yours (max two tickets per person) before they run out!
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Inside the Yellow Cocoon Shell
Phạm Thiên Ân, 2023 // 182 mins
Screening at MIFF as part of the festival’s Bright Horizons film competition, Inside the Yellow Cocoon Shell blends the oneiric musings that typify the works of Apichatpong Weerasethakul and the patient compositions of Tsai Ming-liang. Yet, at heart, Phạm Thiên Ân’s film is a personal odyssey: one that pits questions about existence, spirituality and fate with an unmooring confrontation with the self. Set against the largely under-seen rural landscapes of Vietnam, and having won the famed Caméra d’Or at Cannes, this sumptuously visualised masterpiece will leave a haunting impression.
Don’t miss the Liminal co-presented post-film Q&A on Wednesday 16 August, hosted by yours truly!
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Tiger Stripes
Amanda Nell Eu, 2023 // 95 mins
Coming-of-age films are a dime a dozen, but it’s rare for the processes of physiological and psychological change to be depicted in literal fashion—as is the case in Tiger Stripes. Amanda Nell Eu’s Cannes Critics’ Week Grand Prize winner takes the notion of transformation and runs full throttle with it, channelling its director’s own negative experiences of growing up into a fable about the ways in which isolation and repression can make us feel monstrous. Capped off with a feisty protagonist who snubs her nose at punitive conservatism, this Malaysian body horror is sure to be a beast to reckon with.
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No Bears
Jafar Panahi, 2022 // 107 mins
The unparalleled Iranian auteur returns with another deftly elliptical polemic, this time contemplating the significance of boundary lines: those between nation-states, those demarcating ethics and the law, those that define what we are (and aren’t) personally willing to transgress. In No Bears, Jafar Panahi proves once again that constraint is the mother of invention, mining pathos and critique from what may seem a simple premise.
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Sand
Visakesa Chandrasekaram, 2023 // 100 mins
The adage that those who don’t heed history’s warnings are doomed to repeat it is brought to the fore in Sand, a Sri Lankan drama that homes in on the residual tensions between the Sinhalese majority and the Tamil minority following the 1983–2009 civil war. With compassion and heart-wrenching authenticity, director Visakesa Chandrasekaram—also a human rights lawyer and academic—weaves a tale that recounts not just the still-healing wounds of a divided nation, but also one man’s search for purpose and peace.
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Cobweb
Kim Jee-woon, 2023 // 135 mins
Would it really be a film festival without at least one film on the shady machinations of screen production? In Cobweb, Parasite star Song Kang-ho plays a harried director trying and failing to get his magnum opus made; his project seems to be riddled with every hurdle imaginable—actors’ egos, producers’ ineptitude, overzealous censors nipping the film in the bud before it’s even bloomed. Meticulously crafted with 1970s period detail along with a rollicking score, this is a meta comedy that unmasks the mess behind the silver screen.
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Shortcomings
Randall Park, 2023 // 92 mins
From one story of egos to another—in Shortcomings, an aspiring Japanese American filmmaker with an undeniable chip on his shoulder revels in blaming everyone except himself for his series of misfortunes. Cleverly satirising the sometimes-overly-pretentious worlds of cinema and art, actor turned director Randall Park (of Fresh off the Boat, Always Be My Maybe and now MCU fame) provokes laughs and knowing critique in equal measure—a feat ably bolstered by the film’s impressive cast that includes Justin H. Min, Sherry Cola, Debby Ryan and Tavi Gevinson (plus Stephanie Hsu in cameo).
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Bonus recommendations: The Breaking Ice, one of two MIFF 2023 films from Ilo Ilo director Anthony Chen; Monster, the Cannes Queer Palm–winning latest from Hirokazu Kore-eda; and Shayda, Noora Niasari’s moving portrait of an Iranian mother and daughter seeking a new life in Australia.