Our Guide to MIFF’s Inaugural Bright Horizons Emerging Films Award

Melbourne International Film Festival is back for its 70th year, running from August 5 to August 21 across various Melbourne locations. Long known for its support of new and upcoming filmmakers, this year MIFF is debuting the Bright Horizons Award – the richest feature film prize in the southern hemisphere – as part of its inaugural MIFF Film Competition.

Supported by Vic Screen, the program is dedicated to recognising new talent, with a collection of the most impressive emerging voices in global cinema. Here are five to keep an eye on.

Aftersun
Eleven-year-old Sophie (Frankie Corio) is in Turkey with her dad (Paul Mescal, Normal People), enjoying the sun and quality time with a parent who is fun, attentive and young enough to be mistaken for her brother. It’s a happy time – but, years later, Sophie begins sifting through holiday footage and realises things weren’t all as they seemed.

Scottish director Charlotte Wells’s debut feature puts a father-daughter bond under a spotlight in this deeply felt and firmly realistic film. Its melancholic and evocative scenes are capped off by a nostalgic ’90s pop soundtrack.

Petrol
An otherworldly version of Melbourne, where the supernatural meets the quantum realm, is the setting for this twisted tale of an increasingly intense and reality-rattling friendship.

Director Alena Lodkina’s follow-up to the highly acclaimed Strange Colours (MIFF 2018), Petrol sees a very different portrayal of the early twenties experience. Deep and meaningful share-house conversations and dodgy substances collide with ghosts and the occult, as one woman struggles to better understand her new friend – and herself.

Neptune Frost
Ten years in the making, this radically ambitious and experimental Afrofuturist musical – by visionary poet and musician Saul Williams –transcends space, time and gender.

Neptune Frost is the story of a young coltan miner who encounters an intersex hacker (played by both Cheryl Isheja and Elvis Ngabo) in a past, present and future Rwanda. He’s led down a trans-dimensional rabbit hole of possible post-colonial realities, as the film confronts changing technology, racial capitalism, human labour and the slippery strictures of gender.

Nominated for the Queer Palm at the Cannes Directors’ Fortnight, the film is a celebratory Black and queer astral trip.

Robe of Gems
Directed by Natalia López Gallardo, and winner of the Berlinale’s Silver Bear Jury Prize,
Robe of Gems is a visually stunning and emotionally fraught look at the murky complexities of the Mexican drug trade, and brings with it a major new talent.

Wealthy but naive Isabel moves with her children into her family’s country estate as her marriage begins to crumble. She soon finds out the housekeeper is struggling with the sudden disappearance of her sister, as well as a side hustle with the local cartel. Isabel’s obsession with finding answers soon takes over – leading to perilous outcomes.

Leonor Will Never Die
A string of tragedies at home and work have left screenwriter Leonor adrift with her only source of income – a career as an action film director – now abandoned. When a freak accident puts her in a coma, she finds herself inside one of her own scripts. She soon realises it’s time to put her story back on track.

Winner of Sundance’s Special Jury Award for Innovative Spirit, this ambitious debut from Filipino writer and director Martika Ramirez Escobar puts an older woman at the centre of an audacious, at times hilarious, tribute to ’80s Filipino action films that doubles as a salute to the healing power of storytelling.

Broadsheet is a proud media partner of MIFF. See the full 2022 MIFF program.