MIFF 2025: International Shorts 1
Melbourne International Film Festival 2025 is ongoing and I went to watch my first session (of 12!) , International Shorts 1.
This post my short review of the six short films in the session!
For context: I am a photographer/youtuber that wants to up my cinematography and storytelling, that’s why I’m watching 12 sessions at the film festival PLUS reviewing them here on my blog!
As an aside, since these are “International Shorts”, they are delivered in many different languages, a lot of them I don’t speak (I speak English and Indonesian). As a person who doesn’t understand these languages, somehow the language also bears weight in how I interpret or see the film. Maybe that’s silly, or maybe that’s how it’s supposed to be. Anyway, here’s the review
Image courtesy of miff.com.au
Language: French
A very strong opener to the session. It’s a black and white movie with striking cinematography. Well, all of these films have beautiful cinematography but a B&W movie needs to work even harder because there are no colours to rely on. That also made the story more inviting, at least to me, who don’t usually watch B&W movies.
Speaking of the story, I recognised the structure, but the content itself has many layers of abstraction.
The structure has that classic hook: something incredibly odd happened (a person being trapped alive in a casket), then flashback to start the story. So we, the audience, knows what’s going to happen, we just don’t know how it got there. Plus, we don’t know why we should care about that person/character. The mystery continued with the breath test, the main character’s job, the supporting characters, and the relationship development between them. By the end of it, I left knowing how the opening sequence happened, and really felt for the characters.
As for the content, I think diving too deep into it will spoil it too much, so I’ll give a generic overview of the themes: humanity, lust, taboos, love, societal expectations, and… capitalism?
Image courtesy of miff.com.au
Language: Mandarin, English
Two women wanting to be an artist. Or are already artist but want to be “successful” ones. The story in this one was the easiest to follow! The story is told in a more literal way, of course still with room for interpretation. The scenes are beautifully captured, especially the opening scene when there was a split screen where they were both running towards their boyfriends (spoiler alert: to break up with them)
The vibrant colours contrasted with the previous B&W movie. And as I mentioned, the story is more straightforward and literal, also contrasted with the previous movie. And! This one is set in a “normal” world, again, not like the previous one. Great sequencing of movies so far by the team!
One personal note: the idea of “I want to be an artist!” is such a familiar one for me.
Image courtesy of miff.com.au
Language: English, French, Italian, Slovenian
If “Nervous Energy” was vibrant and straightforward, “Common Pear” is dull and abstract, way more abstract than I can personally digest in one pass. I think I need to see it again to understand more of it. Reading the description of the film on the website definitely helped. The colour scheme lulled me a bit, I was dozing off… just a little bit. If it’s not clear already, this review is very much biased and subjective to me, who is not a movie expert in the first place.
What I do remember and appreciate from “Common Pear” is the theme of the importance of the environment. I think it’s a hard theme to explore without exaggerating (e.g. fantasy world) or literally be a documentary. So conveying it as movie in the middle of that is very neat!
Image courtesy of miff.com.au
Language: Spanish
The story structure of “Panadrilo” is similar to “Two People Exchanging Saliva“. The difference being: the insane-situation-reveal in this one is not the ending of the movie, it’s just something that happened. That thing being: the main character’s husband was absorbed into a crocodile and now can talk through the crocodile…. yep, you read that right, very creative! I’m sure that there’s a comment on society, politics, or the state of the world, but it went over my head (for now). I still enjoyed it though! The surreal unexplained situation just made me go “huhhh”, but not enough to turn me off.
Image courtesy of miff.com.au
Language: Greek
I love, love, love that the start of the film is a classroom scene where one of them was drawing on the arm of the other one. This was such a high school thing! And it neatly conveys a level of closeness that feels appropriate. To me, it tells me a lot about the kind of relationship that existed between them.
From the visuals, it looks like it was filmed on analog. I truly hope that’s true because the throwback to analog mediums was so nostalgic. Well, the title has “cassettes” after all, so it makes sense. It reminds me of simpler times. I recently got into film photography as well, so I’m so fond of analog mediums.
The colour scheme on this really brought home the analog-nostalgic vibe. I think you can see that just from the screenshot above.
Image courtesy of miff.com.au
“Ali” was the best ending to this. The story structure is one that doesn’t reveal much and keeps you guessing. It’s the kind that I can’t really talk about because that would spoil it. Just know that the climax is beautiful. It’s one of those surrealist films where everything seemed “normal” until it wasn’t. Okay, maybe even that was a bit of a spoiler.
I felt like the acting stood out to me in this one. The characters didn’t have much development, since it’s a short film after all, but I feel like their essence was conveyed quite well by the actors. The cinematography was spell-binding, some scenes are so stunning.
I didn’t realise this was the last film in the list, and this one left me wanting more! I heard people praising it as we were walking out the cinema. Really one of a kind. If you were to watch only one movie out of this list, I would recommend “Ali”.