'Melancholia' and 'Drive' Headline New MIFF Selections

With the Melbourne International Film Festival (MIFF) set to run between July 21 and April 7, 25 new features, all of which played at the Cannes Film Festival in May, have been added to an already stellar lineup.

They include (courtesy of Quickflix):

Beauty (Oliver Hermanus)
Drive (Nicholas Winding Refn)
Elena (Andrei Zvyagintsev)
El Velador (Natalia Almada)
Footnote (Joseph Cedar)
Goodbye (Mohammed Rasoulof)
Guilty of Romance (Sion Sono)
Hanezu (Naomi Kawase)
Le Havre (Aki Kaurismaki)
Martha Marcy May Marlene (Sean Durkin)
Melancholia (Lars Von Trier)
Michael (Markus Schleinzer)
Michael Petrucciani (Michael Radford)
Once Upon A Time in Anatolia (Nuri Bilge Ceylan)
Outside Satan (Bruno Dumont)
Play (Ruben Ostlund)
Polisse (Maiwenn le Besco)
Take Shelter (Jeff Nichols)
Tatsumi (Eric Koo)
The Day He Arrives (Hong Sang-soo)
The Giants (Bouli Lanner)
The Kid With The Bike (Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne)
The Silence of Joan (Philippe Ramos)
The Yellow Sea (Na Hong-Jin)
Toomelah (Ivan Sen)

Films already confirmed to be playing at the MIFF are Richard Ayoade's Submarine, and Lena Dunham's Tiny Furniture, both making their Australian debut at the Festival. Other notable flicks making the journey to Melbourne following screenings at the Sydney Film Festival are A Separation (the Golden Bear winner), The Turin Horse, Jane Eyre, Norwegian Wood, 13 Assassins, Cave of Forgotten Dreams, Project Nim, Beats, Rhymes and Life The Travels of a Tribe Called Quest, Senna and Life in A Day. The Opening Night film is yet to be named, but the announced Closing Night film is Kriv Stenders' Red Dog. I wish I could follow my SFF experience with a trip to Melbourne but I likely couldn't go for more than a couple of days. If Melancholia, Drive and Submarine are playing in close proximity, it could be too good to resist.