The Screen Show

Two stand-outs from the Melbourne International Film Festival:

Filmmaker Courtney Stephens on dolphin intelligence, sensory deprivation and the psychedelic experience...her new documentary looks at the strange and often confronting work of twentieth-century utopian neuroscientist John Lilly.

British-Nigerian director Akinola Davies Jr remembers the father he barely knew in his debut feature My Father's Shadow, a Lagos-set family drama that unfolds during a tumultuous period in Nigeria's political history. 

• Presenter, Jason Di Rosso
• Producer, Tony Norton
• Sound engineer, Matthew Sigley
• Executive producer, Rhiannon Brown
• Music from My Father's Shadow score by CJ Mirra & Duval Timothy

A first glance at the Melbourne International Film Festival...Russian American filmmaker Julia Loktev on her fascinating five and a half hour documentary about journalists in Russia, My Undesirable Friends: Part I — Last Air in Moscow.

One of the luminaries of Australian avant-garde filmmaking Dirk de Bruyn talks about two of his profoundly personal films, appearing as part of a career retrospective at the Melbourne Cinematheque.

• Presenter, Jason Di Rosso
• Producer, Tony Norton
• Sound engineer, Ross Richardson
• Executive producer, Rhiannon Brown

Acclaimed director Thomas Vinterberg (Festen, Another Round) on his new 7-part series Families Like Ours, which is set in a hypothetical near future where global warming has led to the imminent flooding of Denmark.

Director Boris Lojkine and actor Abou Sangaré discuss Cannes Un Certain Regard winner The Story of Souleymane, a deeply empathetic drama that follows a food delivery courier through the streets of Paris as he prepares for his asylum application interview.

Black Bird writer Dennis Lehane and actor Taron Egerton on Smoke, a new Apple TV+ series about serial arsonists.

• Presenter, Jason Di Rosso
• Producer, Tony Norton
• Sound engineer, Riley Mellis
• Executive producer, Rhiannon Brown

Australian director Justin Kurzel on his documentary Ellis Park, which follows Bad Seed and Dirty Three violinist Warren Ellis as he pursues his twin passions: making music and supporting a wildlife sanctuary in Sumatra.

Filmmakers Danny Boyle and Alex Garland talk political allegory and post-Brexit Britain in their new zombie film 28 Years Later, a follow-up to the cult 2002 film 28 Days Later.

Bonus zombie extra: an exhumed interview with the late George Romero, director of the seminal 1968 film Night Of The Living Dead.

• Presenter, Jason Di Rosso
• Producer, Tony Norton
• Sound engineer, Ross Richardson
• Executive producer, Rhiannon Brown

Past Lives director Celine Song on her new rom-com Materialists, starring Dakota Johnson as a professional matchmaker who falls into a love triangle with her broke ex and a wealthy finance guy.

The Rings of Power actor Charlie Vickers and showrunner Tony Ayres discuss working on the Netflix adaptation of Jane Harper's The Survivors, a story about a small coastal town haunted by the tragedy of three deaths.

• Presenter, Jason Di Rosso
• Producer, Tony Norton
• Sound engineer, Ross Richardson
• Executive producer, Rhiannon Brown

U.S. writer-director Jason Keller talks Stick, a new sports comedy starring Owen Wilson as a washed-up former golf pro and Peter Dager as his Gen Z protege.

Filmmaker Kevin Macdonald on his doc One to One: John & Yoko... set in 1972 New York, the film explores John Lennon and Yoko Ono's world amid a turbulent era. 

White Lotus star Jason Isaacs on his latest role in The Salt Path, where he stars opposite Gillian Anderson in a sweet adaptation of the best-selling memoir about a couple who lose everything and start over on a 1000 km coastal trek.

• Presenter, Jason Di Rosso
• Producer, Sarah Corbett
• Sound engineer, Ross Richardson
• Executive producer, Rhiannon Brown

Direct from Cannes, where it received a seven-and-a-half-minute standing ovation, Wes Anderson and Benicio Del Toro discuss The Phoenician Scheme.

Adelaide’s Phillipou Brothers on their latest South Australian horror for A24, Bring Her Back, the follow-up to their acclaimed feature debut Talk To Me.

Artistic director of Sydney Film Festival Nashen Moodley is also fresh from the Cannes Film Festival. He speaks to us about the Palme d'Or-winning film It Was Just An Accident by Jafar Panahi, also set to screen at SFF.

• Presenter, Jason Di Rosso
• Producer, Sarah Corbett
• Executive producer, Rhiannon Brown
• Sound engineer, Ross Richardson

French director Gilles Lellouche on Beating Hearts, a genre-spanning romantic epic starring Adèle Exarchopoulos (Blue is the Warmest Colour) that follows a written-in-the-stars infatuation tested by social boundaries.

Canadian filmmaker Matthew Rankin discusses his multi-award winning Universal Language...in a surreal interzone between Tehran and Winnipeg, the lives of several characters intertwine in unexpected ways.

2025 Berlinale Grand Jury Prize winner The Blue Trail sees a remarkable woman try to evade a dystopian fate via a grand Amazonian quest. Ahead of Sydney Film Festival screenings, Jason sits down with Brazilian director Gabriel Mascaro.

• Presenter, Jason Di Rosso
• Producer, Sarah Corbett
• Sound engineer, Ross Richardson
• Executive producer, Rhiannon Brown

The newest chapter in the successful Final Destination horror franchise takes audiences back to the beginning of Death’s twisted sense of justice. Jason meets directors Adam Stein & Zach Lipovsky.

Irish director Lorcan Finnegan on The Surfer, a psychological surf thriller starring Nicolas Cage which takes aim at Australian masculinity and localism on a W.A. beach.

As it becomes available to stream on SBS on Demand, an excerpt from Jason's interview with Iranian-Australian filmmaker Noora Niasari on her film Shayda, a work inspired by her childhood experiences in a women's shelter in Melbourne in the 1990s. (You can listen to the whole interview here.)

• Presenter, Jason Di Rosso
• Producer, Sarah Corbett
• Sound engineer, Roi Huberman
• Executive producer, Rhiannon Brown

American film director Eli Craig discusses his horror Clown in a Cornfield...as teenagers start to go missing one by one in a Midwestern town, the local legend of Frendo the clown becomes all too real.

Director Mehdi Idir on Monsieur Aznavour, a biopic about an iconic singer-songwriter who beat all odds to become one of France’s best-loved entertainers.

Andrew Ahn on his adaptation of Ang Lee's The Wedding Banquet, which re-imagines the original film's themes to explore LGBTQIA+ problems of a new kind in the 21st century.

• Presenter, Jason Di Rosso
• Producer, Sarah Corbett
• Sound engineer, Ross Richardson
• Executive producer, Rhiannon Brown