PENINSULA Cinemas Rosebud will screen The Fox, an animatronic black comedy in which the late Sam Neill voices a foul-mouthed magpie – a role he completed and was still promoting in the months before his death in July – as part of a 12-film Melbourne International Film Festival regional program, showing at the venue this August.
Directed by Dario Russo, The Fox stars Jai Courtney, with Olivia Colman voicing a trickster fox and Neill voicing a gossiping magpie in a small-town tale of duplicity and discontent.
MIFF Regional runs across two weekends, 14-16 and 21-23 August, taking the festival’s 74th edition to cinema locations across Victoria, including Ballarat, Bendigo, Castlemaine, Geelong, Healesville, Rosebud, Sale and Warrnambool.
Physical attendance at MIFF Regional grew by 25 per cent in 2025, with organisers expanding the program this year to build on that momentum.
The Rosebud program also includes opening film Wicker, a fable starring Olivia Colman and Alexander Skarsgård about a fisherwoman and the husband she wishes into being, with an ensemble cast including Peter Dinklage, Richard E Grant and Elizabeth Debicki.
Gus Van Sant’s black comedy Dead Man’s Wire, starring Bill Skarsgård and Dacre Montgomery, and Markus Schleinzer’s Rose, featuring Sandra Hüller’s Silver Bear-winning performance, are also on the Rosebud line-up.
Three Rosebud titles are backed by the MIFF Premiere Fund, which co-finances new Australian feature films that then premiere at the festival: Digby & Camille, Trevor Graham’s documentary portrait of a couple living with Down syndrome; Mad Rush, Maddelin McKenna’s debut about a phone scam victim; and Sweet Milk Lake, Harvey Zielinski’s dramedy about a young trans man.
Other Rosebud screenings include Phenomena, Josef Gatti’s chemistry-inspired visual spectacle; Whistle, Christopher Nelius’s documentary on competitive musical whistling; Flies, Fernando Eimbcke’s Berlinale prize-winning drama; Hen, György Pálfi’s bird’s-eye-view fable; and One in a Million, Itab Azzam’s Sundance award-winning documentary.
MIFF Artistic Director Al Cossar said the festival was committed to reaching audiences beyond Melbourne.
“Melbourne may be in the title, but MIFF is a festival that goes far beyond our city limits, presenting eclectic and exciting program highlights to nine cinema locations around our state via MIFF Regional,” said Cossar.
Full program available at miff.com.au
First published in the Southern Peninsula News – 29 July 2026
