Courtney Barnett, Archie Roach & The Triffids to debut documentaries at Melbourne International Film Festival

A number of Australian music documentaries will premiere as part of this year’s Melbourne International Film Festival (MIFF).

The festival is set to make its physical return from August 5 – 22.

Directed by Danny Cohen, Anonymous Club traces the career of Melbourne singer-songwriter Courtney Barnett after the release of her 2018 album Tell Me How You Really Feel, following her on tour and presenting her professional and personal life through a raw, intimate perspective.

The film, which was funded through the MIFF Premiere Fund to help finance independent Australian works, also features narration from Barnett via an audio diary, offering an insight into the creative process of one of Australia’s pre-eminent songwriters of the modern era.

Also slated to debut at this year’s festival is Wash My Soul in the River’s Flow, a feature-length documentary centred around First Nations songwriting icon Archie Roach and his late wife Ruby Hunter.

Helmed by Philipa Bateman, Wash My Soul in the River’s Flow tells the story of Roach and Hunter’s monumental 2004 collaborative concert with Paul Grabowsky’s Australian Art Orchestra, which saw the couple recount their experiences as children of the Stolen Generation and how they found one another within music.

Meanwhile, the frontman of seminal Australian ’80 alt-rockers The Triffids will be the focus of Love In Bright Landscapes, directed by Jonathan Alley and financed by the MIFF Premiere Fund.

Comprised of previously unseen footage, documents and interviews with band members and contemporaries, the film will explore the story of David McComb during The Triffids’ early years, his influence within the Australian music community and the health issues that led to his untimely passing in 1999.

The festival will also feature a number of international music documentaries, including Sisters With Transistors, which celebrates the contributions and history of women in electronic music; and We Are The Thousand, tracing the story of the Italian town that united to form the world’s largest rock band in order to get the Foo Fighters to perform in their home town.

View a full list of films from the first MIFF program announcement here.