First Day of MIFF

After the opening night film Wednesday, the Melbourne International Film Festival got down to business yesterday ...

Saw my first 2 films:
Deliver Us From Evil - a really good (but hard to watch) doco about pedophiles in the Catholic clergy and efforts to have the Church publicly acknowledge the issue. It centred around an interview with a truly evil man - a priest who abused kids for about 30 years (with the apparent knowledge of his superiors in the Church). My only real concern about the film was that it gave so much airtime to this man, who seemed to relish reliving his crimes.

Luxury Car - the winner of the Un Certin Regard section of the Cannes festival this year. It is a Chinese film about the widening cultural gulf between the old and the young and the urban and the rural and also about the mix of Communism and Capitalism in contemporary China. I liked it. It was 88 minutes, which definitely helped, and beautifully shot - which also helped. It really felt like a window into issues in contemporary China. Worth seeing.