Melbourne 2014 Announces First Glance, Here Are The Highlights

With plenty of favorites from the festival circuit, MIFF will screen: Tom at the Farm, the FIPRESCI (Venice) award-winning thriller from Xavier Dolan.

Boyhood, Richard Linklater's ground-breaking new film, which charts the development of a boy between the ages of six and eighteen, using the same actor in periodic shoots over 12 years. Tsai Ming-liang's Venice Film Festival Grand Jury Prize winner

Stray Dogs, a bittersweet meditation on the people who fall through society's cracks.

Hard to Be a God, inspired by Boris and Arkady Strugatsky's sci-fi novel of the same name.

From Wong Kar-wai, finally The Grandmaster will make its Australian debut; a breathtaking martial arts biopic about Bruce Lee's teacher, the legendary Ip Man (Tony Leung).

Nicolas Cage stars in Joe, a gritty Southern tale of masculine angst by director David Gordon Green (Prince Avalanche, MIFF 2013).

Jesse Eisenberg, along with Dakota Fanning and Peter Sarsgaard star in Kelly Reichardt's thrilling Night Moves.

Belle & Sebastian front-man Stuart Murdoch makes his directorial debut with the bittersweet musical God Help the Girl.

Filmmaker Steven Knight directs the solo-protagonist, single-setting, real-time thriller Locke, starring Tom Hardy (Bronson, MIFF 2008).

The Skeleton Twins is a darkly funny film about adult siblings, starring Saturday Night Live alumni Kristen Wiig and Bill Hader.

The home-grown rom-com The Infinite Man, one of the big hits at this year's SXSW Film Festival.

Twitch favorite R100, from crazed director Hitoshi Matsumoto (Symbol, MIFF 2010; about a middle-aged furniture salesman who escapes routine by joining an S&M club. 

More humor comes in the form of What We Do in the Shadows, a mockumentary about vampires, from director Taika Waititi (Boy, MIFF 2010) and Flight of the Conchords mastermind Jemaine Clement.

Ira Sachs' (Keep the Lights On, MIFF 12) Love is Strange is a moving story about the trials faced by a couple after 39 years together, starring John Lithgow and Alfred Molina.

Among the music documentaries at MIFF this year are Pulp: A Film About Life, Death and Supermarkets, Florian Habicht's cinematic love letter to Sheffield and its best known 90s band.

20,000 Days on Earth, a biopic about Melbourne's own post-punk poet Nick Cave, which won this year's Sundance World Cinema Documentary Editing and Directing award.

Other fascinating documentaries on pop culture include Advanced Style, the big-screen interpretation of Ari Seth Cohen's hugely popular street-style blog of the same name, which showcases New York City's fashionable senior citizens.

Jodorowsky's Dune is the story of how one of the most ambitious film projects of all time never came to be, from filmmaker Frank Pavich.

Frederick Wiseman's documentary At Berkeley is a comprehensive cinematic portrait of the great malaise eroding America's college education system.

Oscar and Emmy-nominated director Joe Berlinger (Metallica: Some Kind of Monster) returns with his latest documentary, Whitey: United States of America V. James J Bulger, about the trial of the infamous head of Boston's criminal underworld.

Proving that truth is stranger than fiction, MIFF screens the Best Documentary award-winner from this year's Tribeca Film Festival, Point and Shoot, a coming-of-age story about a young man who joined the fight against tyrannical dictator Muammar Gaddafi.

Dinosaur 13 is based on the timely tale of science versus politics, Rex Appeal: The Amazing Story of Sue, the Dinosaur That Changed Science, the Law and My Life.

Other than the usual venues, MIFF will also return to Treasury Cinema (behind the Old Treasury Building on Spring Street), with more CBD venues to be announced soon.

Listen Up Philip, starring Jason Schwartzman as a rising star on the New York literary scene, who also happens to be a spectacular misanthrope.

Black Coal, Thin Ice, the new cinematic triumph from Chinese phenomenon Diao Yinan. winner of Best Film and Best Actor awards at Berlin this year.