Melbourne International Film Festival is almost here to warm up the cultural calendar of a frostbitten city. MIFF’s Headliners Strand, presented by Mini, features a selection of the most talked-about films from the global festival circuit. It’s a stacked line-up of international and local flicks spanning existential horrors, witty satires and a decades-in-the-making epic by a Hollywood great.

Ahead of the festival’s return, here’s our guide to MIFF’s stellar headliners presented by Mini.

Good things take time

Francis Ford Coppola began developing Megalopolis in early 1983 when he started collecting script fragments and notes for a film about Roman politician and soldier Lucius Sergius Catilina. Through Adam Driver’s portrayal of an architect inspired by the historic figure, Coppola mirrors the fall of Rome in the future of America in an epic science fiction that also stars Jon Voight and Aubrey Plaza. Ahead of its national release in September, MIFF and Mini are putting on a one-night-only screening of the Hollywood legend’s blockbuster at IMAX.

And MIFF mainstay Jia Zhangke collates 22 years of footage in Caught by the Tides, with a defining performance by actress (and Zhangke’s wife) Zhao Tao that digs deep into a character that has spanned the director’s career.

Shifting perspectives

Director Payal Kapadia muses on nocturnal Mumbai in All We Imagine as Light, which follows three nurses and their romantic entanglements. Sebastian Stan plays an aspiring actor learning that confidence isn't skin-deep in the twisted morality tale A Different Man. And in Grand Tour, Cannes Film Festival Best Director winner Miguel Gomes demands life be appreciated moment by moment in a story of a determined bride in pursuit of her runaway groom across Asia.

If you want to scream at politicians

Cate Blanchett, Alicia Vikander and Charles Dance play world leaders trapped in a forest in Guy Maddin’s Rumours. The absurdist comedy (named for the Fleetwood Mac album) is somewhere between a satire and a soap opera that sees a G7 Summit go apocalyptically awry. Meanwhile, Mohammad Rasoulof returns to MIFF with a response to his country’s punishing political climate. The Seed of a Sacred Fig is a searing family drama that’s a courageous testament to resistance against tyranny.

For something a bit spooky

Demi Moore satirises aging in Hollywood alongside Margaret Qualley in French director Coralie Fargeat’s divisive body horror The Substance, which received one of the longest standing ovations at its premiere during this year’s Cannes Film Festival. Also working with body horror, genre pioneer David Cronenberg meditates on loss, longing and grief in The Shrouds, starring Diane Krueger, Vincent Cassel and Guy Pearce. And cult-loved film company A24 (Everything, Everywhere All at Once and Talk to Me) blurs fandom and identity in its latest reality-bending horror drama I Saw The TV Glow, which sports a stellar soundtrack with original songs from Phoebe Bridgers and Caroline Polachek.

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