Fantastic beasts make their mark on screen at Melbourne International Film Festival

Melbourne International Film Festival will show 250 films from more than 60 countries and include old and new Australian films.

Runt author Craig Silvey with Lily LaTorre and Squid, who star in the movie based on his book. Picture: Court McAllister

Animals will put their paw prints, beak marks and slime trails all over the Melbourne International Film Festival, which kicks off in the Victorian capital on August 8.

For Fremantle-based author Craig Silvey, it’s all about Squid, a rescue dog who stars – alongside human actors including Lily La­Torre, Jai Courtney, Deborah Mailman and Jack Thompson – in the film adaptation of his bestselling 2002 novel Runt. Like the ­titular Runt, who doesn’t let his indeterminate gene pool hold him back, Squid, who is about two, is a clever mongrel in this feel-good movie directed by John Sheedy.

“It was a deliberate emphasis of our casting brief to foster a mix-breed dog and our Animal Department searched far and wide before finding Squid in a shelter,’’ says Silvey, who wrote the script and was on set for the duration of the shoot.

“I’ve had the great pleasure of spending a lot of time with Squid and I think the world will fall in love with her as much as we have.

“She’s the perfect ambassador for the themes of our film, and also the benefits of rescuing vulnerable dogs. She now has a loving home for life.”

Silvey says LaTorre, as Annie Shearer, the 11-year-old who adopts Runt, is an “absolute gem” and that working alongside Thompson, who turns 84 on August 31, is a “dream come true”.

MIFF will feature 250 films from 62 countries.

The opening night movie is Memoir of a Snail, a stop-motion animation directed by Adam Elliot, who won an Oscar for his 2003 short film Harvie Krumpet. Centred on a young woman in a fractured family, it explores how there are times when people, like the snails she keeps, need to retreat into their shells. The voice cast includes Sarah Snook, Kodi Smit-McPhee, Magda Szubanski, Eric Bana and Jacki Weaver.

Smit-McPhee and Bana also star in one of the restored films that will screen in its new format: Romulus, My Father, Richard Roxburgh’s 2007 adaptation of Raimond Gaita’s 1998 memoir. A 4K restoration of Peter Weir’s 1974 film The Cars that Ate Paris will be shown for the first time.

A bird whisperer is at the centre of Sally Aitken’s documentary Every Little Thing. Terry Masear, a Los Angeles schoolteacher, takes time off to care for and rehabilitate wounded hummingbirds, and herself in the process.

Aitken’s previous documentaries include Hot Potato: The Story of the Wiggles and Playing With Sharks: The Valerie Taylor Story.

Mushrooms have had a bad rap lately but Sydney filmmaker Gisela Kaufman hopes to change that in her documentary Fungi: The Web of Life, narrated by Icelandic singer-songwriter Bjork.

Australian musician Warren Ellis takes us into his life, from childhood onwards, in Ellis Park, directed by Justin Kurzel.

The international offerings ­include Kate Winslet in Lee, a drama about American photojournalist Lee Miller, known for her unflinching coverage of World War II; Saoirse Ronan in The Outrun, centred on a recovering addict returning to her childhood home in Scotland; and Julia Louis-Dreyfus in Tuesday, a dark fantasy about a mother caring for her terminally ill teen daughter in which Death appears as a giant macaw.

Several of the Australian directors, including Sheedy, Elliot and Aitken, will attend the screenings of their films and take part in Q&As. Some of the films will move on to a national release. Runt and Memoir of a Snail, for example, will be in cinemas from September 19 and October 17 respectively.

More: www.miff.com.au