World Movie News: The Last 24 Hours
Melbourne closes out MIFF with La Gradiva taking the Bright Horizons Award and the Indian Film Festival of Melbourne crowns its own winners.
Morning all. Here’s what happened in the world of movies during the last 24 hours. A proper Antipodean flavour to today’s roundup with little new movie news to report, I focus on two very different Melbourne festivals who wrap up their 2026 editions within days of each other.
MIFF crowns La Gradiva as its Bright Horizons winner: The Melbourne International Film Festival announced its 2026 award winners yesterday, with Marine Atlan’s La Gradiva taking home the $140,000 Bright Horizons Award — one of the richer prizes on the global festival circuit, aimed at spotlighting bold new filmmaking voices. Josef Gatti’s Phenomena picked up a special jury mention, while Isaac Elliott’s ice-hockey documentary Hard as Puck took the Intrepid Audience Award. MIFF itself runs in cinemas until today, capping off a fortnight that also included the MIFF Shorts Awards, where New Zealand filmmakers Nick Mayow and Prisca Bouchet took the $12,500 top prize for Lion Rock.
The Indian Film Festival of Melbourne crowns its own winners: Running concurrently and also wrapping today, the 17th Indian Film Festival of Melbourne announced its full winners list, with Lokah Chapter 1: Chandra — Dominic Arun’s mythology-rooted superhero film starring Kalyani Priyadarshan — taking Best Film. Rima Das’s Not a Hero won Best Indie Film, while Vijay Varma and Rasika Dugal picked up the streaming acting honours for Matka King and Delhi Crime Season 3 respectively. Between the two festivals, Melbourne’s had a genuinely enormous fortnight for film — a nice reminder that the festival calendar doesn’t stop just because Cannes and Venice get all the headlines.
I’m holding off on this weekend’s US and UK box office figures until the confirmed actuals land on Monday, so expect those in tomorrow’s edition rather than today’s estimates. That’s your lot for now — until next time.
More as the week’s news develops, but that’s all for today.
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