Is this how it feels to be young, broke, scammed and cast out on the street?

When Maddelin McKenna’s debut feature Mad Rush screens at MIFF next month, it’s doubtful there will be a more Melbourne film in the program – or one more relevant to viewers of a certain age.

A short (75-minute), frantic, microbudget feature shot guerilla style in 11 days in the heart of the CBD, the film follows Madisha (Senuri Chandrani), a young woman dealing with the triple threat of job loss, imminent homelessness and a financial scam that has her being directed to withdraw her scant savings and follow to the letter the instructions of the voice on the other end of the mobile phone, or risk going to jail.

It feels urgent and powerful. And it is, McKenna insists, absolutely grounded in the reality of life for many young Australians – in no small part because the central plot line actually happened.

“I was living in a share house in Fitzroy North with my cinematographer, Bonita Carzino, and one day our mutual friend burst through the front door with a tote bag full of cash,” she relates. “She slumped down on our couch and told us she had spent the last few hours running around the CBD on the phone to people claiming they were from the ATO.”

McKenna became obsessed with the fact that her friend, who was “very smart and competent”, had almost been scammed out of all her savings. She claims that when she started researching the topic she found young people are, contrary to the popular view, more often the victims of such scams than older people.

And somehow, that seemed to dovetail with a general sense among her friendship group about how challenging the world has become.

“I was having a lot of conversations about the cost-of-living crisis and financial instability and job insecurity, and the ebb and flow of living with that. And I guess the feeling I wanted to get across in the film is the disorienting, chaotic, and propulsive nature of trying to exist in this stimulating world with all of those external pressures coming through.

“I felt like it might be the only time I’m interested in dissecting my 20s,” adds the writer-director, who turns 30 next month. “All the other film ideas I’m writing are really not similar at all to this.”

Mad Rush, in which McKenna’s actor brother William (Harry Potter and the Cursed Child) and mother Michelle also appear, is among the titles announced today as part of the First Glance program for the 74th Melbourne International Film Festival, which was itself hit recently by a cyberattack.

On May 31, MIFF sent an email to its subscriber database advising that the personal details of more than 26,000 customers had been accessed by unauthorised persons. The festival claimed no financial data was exposed in the breach. On June 3, ACMI’s database was similarly hacked.

Also announced in the First Glance line-up are a clutch of award-winning films from the Berlin and Cannes film festivals, including Rose, a tale of “gender transgression” in the 17th century, for which Sandra Huller (Anatomy of a Fall, Hail Mary Project) won the Best Leading Performance award in Berlin; Cannes Grand Prix winner Minotaur, in which director Andrey Zvyagintsev ponders Putin’s war on Ukraine through the prism of Claude Chabrol’s 1969 movie The Unfaithful Wife; and I See Buildings Fall Like Lightning, a tale of five young friends in Birmingham, which won the Cannes Directors’ Fortnight audience award.

There are also new films from Gus Van Sant (Dead Man’s Wire, based on a real-life tale of a kidnapping that played out on live television), and mumblecore pioneer Joe Swanberg (The Sun Never Sets, a love triangle dramedy starring Dakota Fanning and New Girl stars Lamorne Morris and Jake Johnson).

Among the Australian titles announced are documentaries about the indie band Jebediah; The Best Summer, an account of the 1995 Summersault music festival, recorded by Tamra Davis while on tour with her husband, Mike D of the Beastie Boys but forgotten for 30 years; Digby & Camille, a tender documentary portrait of artist Digby Webster and trainee chef Camille Collins, both of whom live with Down syndrome, as they attempt to forge their own path in life and love; and a premiere screening of The Airport Chaplain, a new drama made for SBS starring Hugo Weaving, Claudia Karvan and The Pitt’s Shabana Azeez.

There will also be event screenings of Hedwig and the Angry Inch, fully restored in 4k for its 25th anniversary, with writer-director-star John Cameron Mitchell in attendance, and a similarly pristine print of Memento, Christopher Nolan’s debut feature, starring Guy Pearce as an amnesia-plagued investigator tracking down his wife’s murderer, with a live score as part of the Hear My Eyes program.

Melbourne International Film Festival runs from August 6 to 23. The full program will be announced on July 9. Details: miff.com.au

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