"The really good thing about him is that he's been acting since about the age I was when I did the film – which was 15 – and I think he knew how to talk to me in the way he would have wanted his directors to talk to him at the same age. I've had directors before who have great clarity, but this was different – a different sort of clarity, I guess."

MIFF's artistic director, Michelle Carey, says it has been a pleasure watching the evolution of Oxenbould on screen.

"We first saw him in the festival four years ago and that's quite a long time in a young actor's life, and to see how he's matured is really impressive," she says. "Ed is pretty much in every frame of this film and his performance is quietly mind-blowing. His face is so expressive he really could be a silent film star."

This will be Carey's last festival, after eight years as director and 10 years in total with the festival. She has shared duties with associate artistic director Al Cassar this year, following the birth of her first child, and when it is over she is moving to Germany, where her husband Daniel Fairfax has taken up an academic post.

She is confident this year's line-up will provide a fitting swansong.

Among the standouts, she says, is the Chinese film An Elephant Sitting Still. "It's a four-hour coming-of-age story, a portrait of a life, made all the more tragic by virtue of the fact the filmmaker, Hu Bo, took his own life before it even premiered. It got a lot of buzz as the great discovery at Berlin this year. No one knew anything about this filmmaker beforehand, and it became the talk of the festival."

The sports documentary John McEnroe: In the Realm of Perfection is another example of "found footage" filmmaking (typified by the Amy Winehouse documentary Amy) "but it sits at the more experimental end of the form," Carey says.

From the archives comes Cheaters, a black-and-white silent feature from Australia's pioneering McDonagh sisters, Paulette (director), Isabel (aka Marie Lorraine, actor) and Phyllis (art director).

"You hear of lots of filmmaking brothers, but not of filmmaking sisters," notes Carey. "I'm not sure, maybe they were the only filmmaking sisters ever? At any rate, we don't often get to see films from Australia's silent era, let alone films from that time that were directed by a woman, so it's pretty special."

Festival favourite Ethan Hawke will feature as both actor and director (though not, it seems, as a guest; he is being presented with an award in Locarno while MIFF is running).

Hawke stars in First Reformed, written and directed by Taxi Driver scribe Paul Schrader. A harrowing tale about a Protestant pastor suffering a simultaneous physical and mental breakdown and an environmental awakening, it has earned the 71-year-old Schrader his best reviews in decades.

Hawke steps behind the camera for Blaze, a biopic about country singer Blaze Foley, who was shot dead at the age of 39 in 1989.

Likely to prove a major drawcard is Bill Murray Stories: Life Lessons Learned from a Mythical Man, a documentary from Tommy Avallone about ordinary people's unscripted real-world encounters with the famously eccentric actor.

A documentary about another famous eccentric, fashion designer Alexander McQueen, is also likely to spark plenty of interest.

All up, Carey promises a festival full of "all sorts of cinema, for people who love all sorts of cinema".

And what memories of the festival will she take with her?

"I have been so impressed by how Melbourne has come out to these films, and the faith they've placed in me and my choices," she says. "I am definitely going to miss it, but I'm going out on a high. After eight years, I still love it."

MIFF runs August 2-19. Details: melbournefilmfestival.com.au