For full program details:

Origin: Australia (2020)

Language: English

Origin: USA (2021)

Language: English

Moja Vesna CTC

Origin: Australia, Slovenia (2022)

Language: English, Slovenian with English Subtitles

Saturday August 13th, 7.30pm

A 10-year-old must keep her grief-stricken immigrant family together in this moving Australian–Slovenian co-production.

In Melbourne’s outer-suburbs, reticent Moja, her well-meaning Slovenian father Miloš and her volatile older sister Vesna all struggle to cope with the impacts of a significant death. But Vesna is in denial about the demands of late-stage pregnancy and Miloš barely speaks a word of English, so Moja is forced to assume the role of stabilising presence and cultural mediator – with little chance to mourn the loss of their mother.

Sweet As CTC

Origin: Australia (2022)

Language: English

Sunday August 14th, 1.00pm

The Breakfast Club meets the outback in this uplifting coming-of-age road movie by Nyul Nyul / Yawuru director Jub Clerc (The Turning, MIFF Premiere Fund 2013; The Heights).

With problems on the home front, 15-year-old Murra is on the verge of lashing out. That is, until her policeman uncle thwarts her self-destructive behaviour with a lifeline: a “photo-safari for at-risk kids”. Murra isn’t entirely convinced, but she soon joins cantankerous Kylie, uptight Sean, happy-go-lucky Elvis, and camp counsellors Fernando and Michelle on a transformative bus trip to the Pilbara. On the trail, the teens learn about fun, friendship and first crushes, as well as the forces of ‘reality’ that puncture the bubble of youth.

Navalny CTC

Origin: USA (2022)

Language: English, Russian with English subtitles

Sunday August 14th, 4.00pm

This award-winning, jaw-dropping documentary follows Vladimir Putin’s political rival as he investigates a state-sponsored poisoning: his own.

In late 2020, on a flight from Siberia to Moscow, Alexei Navalny – anti-corruption campaigner, leader of the Russia of the Future party, social media star and popular critic of the Putin government – became viciously ill. Spirited out of the country to life-saving treatment in Berlin, Navalny learned he had been dosed with the Soviet-era nerve agent Novichok, a poison favoured by the Kremlin. While recuperating in Germany, Navalny teamed up with Christo Grozev, lead Russia investigator at Bellingcat, to solve the whodunnit of his own attempted murder … with astonishing results.

Origin: New Zealand (2021)

Language: English

Because We Have Each Other CTC

Origin: Australia (2022)

Language: English

Saturday August 20th, 4.30pm

The delightfully hyper-intimate new feature from [CENSORED] (MIFF 2018) director Sari Braithwaite invites us to share the mundane and the magnificent with a neurodivergent, working-class family.

Janet Sharrock has two children and Brent “Buddha” Barnes has three; the pair has a meet-cute at the local RSL, marry and unite their families, Brady Bunch style. Now grown up, Becky (famous for being one of only 80 people in the world with Highly Superior Autobiographical Memory), Jessica (a comedian living with depression), Brendan (who aspires to take over Buddha’s repair shop), and young Kylie and Dylan laugh, cry, contemplate existence and dream big with their parents, finding joy and stability in one another as they face immense change.

Mass CTC

Origin: USA (2020)

Language: English

Saturday August 20th, 7.00pm

Two couples come together for a painful emotional reckoning in the aftermath of a school shooting in this acclaimed debut feature.

Jay (Jason Isaacs, Streamline, MIFF 2021) and Gail (Martha Plimpton) are parents to a murdered son; Richard (Reed Birney) and Linda (Ann Dowd, The Handmaid’s Tale; A Kid Like Jake, MIFF 2018), parents to the killer. Meeting in the antechamber of an unnamed town’s church six years after the massacre, they tentatively begin to breach the gulf separating understanding from resentment, forgiveness from blame.

Buy Tickets: https://echucaparamount.com/movie/mass

Australian Shorts Package CTC

Sunday August 21st, 1.00pm

Gem (14 mins)

Origin: Australia (2022)

Language: English

Questioning their gender identity, a young person shares a transformative night out with a stranger in this radical experiment with form and perspective.

Mud Crab (12 mins)

Origin: Australia (2022)

Language: English

Reflecting on her own culpability, a woman recounts the traumatising assault she witnessed of a young man in a small Australian coastal town.

Strange Country (15 mins)

Origin: Australia (2021)

Language: English

Cleverman’s Hunter Djali Yumunu Page-Lochard stars in this gorgeously shot First Nations mystery that tells of the ancient spirits inhabiting the land and the people they choose to protect it.

Lucky Peach (15 mins)

Origin: Australia (2022)

Language: Catonese, English with English subtitles

A visually imaginative, deeply personal story about the tensions that develop between an immigrant mother and a young woman as she prepares to head abroad.

Mate (33 mins)

Origin: Australia (2021)

Language: English

The first Australian film to win the International Grand Prix at the prestigious Clermont-Ferrand Short Film Festival, Mate is a relentless encounter with self-destruction.

In George-Alex Nagle’s acclaimed drama, set over a weekend in an insular working-class outpost of Western Sydney, a local no-hoper must reconnect with a reserved schoolboy after a long time apart. But the attempt to re-establish the relationship is threatened by the man’s self-sabotaging nature. Working from a simple premise, Nagle’s complex coming-of-age short tackles masculinity, maturity and the challenges of growth head-on.

Go With Grace (15 mins)

Origin: Australia (2021)

Language: English

In the early hours of a New Year's morning, Grace escapes her apartment to buy cigarettes and wander the streets, where she meets characters who shape the course of her night. A moving, slow-burn look at the aftermath of assault – and a timely reminder that a woman’s body is a political battleground.

Origin: Australia (2022)

Language: English, Russian with English subtitles

Sunday August 21st, 4.00pm

An idealistic film student is drawn into an enigmatic performance artist’s shadowy world in Alena Lodkina’s follow-up to the much-acclaimed Strange Colours (MIFF 2018).

While scouting locations for a university project, Eva (played by Bump’s Nathalie Morris) crosses paths with Mia; later, they meet again at a house party, and an intense friendship soon forms between the introverted student filmmaker and the inscrutable but magnetic performer. As the pair becomes ever more entwined, so does the supernatural begin to entangle with the everyday, revealing the cracks between memory and make-believe, reality and fantasy. All the while, Eva seeks to better understand her friend – and her own self – leading her deeper into the surreal rabbit hole that is Mia’s life.