Kate Fitzpatrick on Women in Horror, Film Programming and the Joy of MIFF
Interview by Mina Wakefield (she/her)
Kate Fitzpatrick is a lifelong film devotee, a passionate lover of horror and one of MIFF’s Senior Programmers. In this conversation, she reflects on the rich panoply of films in MIFF’s 2025 program, the enormous undertaking of programming a city-wide festival, and the delicate art of crafting a line-up that speaks to a wide range of audiences. For Fitzpatrick, what makes MIFF special year in year out is not just the films themselves, but the sense of community they foster: thousands of people braving the Melbourne winter to share the collective joy of cinema.
Mina: You've probably been asked a few times already, if someone could only go and see three films this year, which three would you recommend?
Kate: Oh my goodness. That's such a hard question. It's like when people get asked about the Letterboxd top four, everyone's like, you need more than four.
There's one session that I'm keen for people to come to, and that's a secret screening. We're screening the documentary A Thousand Women in Horror, directed by Donna Davies. It's based on a book by Melbourne-born horror academic Alex Heller-Nicholas.
So as a complementary program to that, we've put together a double feature, where you only find out what's going to screen on the night. They're two rare films, both directed by women, obviously. Even my proper film nerd friends haven't seen these films. So, I think that's a really special event.
I would also encourage people to come to our MIFF competition called Bright Horizons – a program that focuses on first and second features by new directors. These are films that we are passionate about, and we believe these directors are going to have truly great careers.
Within that program, there's this terrific film called A Poet. It’s a Colombian film. The director is Simón Mesa Soto. It's his first film, and it's about this kind of schlubby guy. He's a poet, but he's never really been recognised for his poetry.
He's teaching instead of publishing as a poet, and he comes across a student with a lot of promise. She's kind of like a naturally gifted poet, but she's not really interested in pursuing that part of her personality.
He takes it upon himself to become like an unofficial mentor to her, obviously with kind of disastrous consequences. It's really funny. It's kind of awkward. It's got a little bit of bitterness to it.
Mina: I guess we could call that three if you've got the two secret ones.
Kate: I’ll count those two as one. Outside of that, we have a special program that my colleague Kate Jinx has put together called Chantal Akerman: Traces.
It’s the largest single-director focus that we've ever done in the history of MIFF. Twenty-seven films of hers are screening over 13 sessions. They're incredibly rare. It's all been done in conjunction with the Chantal Akerman Foundation in Europe. Some of the films are Australian premieres, and they're screening digital restorations. So that's kind of a bit of a cheat because that's like 27 films under the one program, but I’d encourage your readers to explore that program.
Mina: So, now a little bit about you as a programmer. I'm interested to know what first drew you to working in film programming?
Kate: I mean, at the very basic root of it all is that I love movies. I grew up watching movies, like lots and lots of movies. I'm the youngest of four siblings, and my siblings are much, much older than I am. So I would get dragged around to my parents' dinner parties, and I'd often kind of find myself sitting in front of a TV after dinner watching a movie by myself. I really fell in love deeply with cinema.
Through a series of chance events, I started working at ACMI in an admin role with the film programs team. I got a few opportunities to program and realised I loved it. Not just selecting films, but also researching how to get them, negotiating rights, and all of the logistics. It’s been a bit of an unconventional path, but I think everyones is in this industry.
Mina: For those of us who don’t know, what does programming a film festival actually involve, especially something as big and complex as MIFF?
Kate: It’s very much a year-round process. Our programming team is small, and as soon as MIFF finishes, Venice starts, then TIFF, so we’re already looking to next year. A huge part of it is watching films, but also the admin of negotiating rights and fees, deciding how films fit together into a cohesive program. We receive over 4,000 submissions for around 300 slots, so we often have to say no to films we love. We also travel to festivals overseas, which is invaluable both for seeing films and for meeting sales agents, filmmakers, and international colleagues.
Mina: MIFF aims to have something for everyone, so how do you approach programming with such a broad and diverse audience in mind?
Kate: We've got quite different opinions or tastes in our programming team, but we often have to put our tastes aside when watching a film with an audience in mind. There have been countless times in years gone by that I've watched a film and thought, ‘personally it's not for me,’ but I can recognise that it's objectively a good, well-made film, and there is an audience out there for it. Then we would collaborate with our colleagues on that, and we'll hash it out together to see if we examine it from the lens of an audience perspective.
Mina: Yeah, it seems like most of MIFF's audience are film buffs, but there's also a huge amount that are just regular people who want to see a cool movie.
Kate: Exactly. And I think we're good at balancing these kinds of big blockbuster-y type films like Eddington that everyone's dying to see, alongside a five-hour documentary from Russia called My Undesirable Friends, for the proper hardcore cinephiles.
Mina: So I did my research, and I know that you have a specific love for horror.
Kate: I do.
Mina: I'm interested to know - what is it about the genre that draws you to it?
Kate: I've always loved horror. I've always loved the feeling of being scared in a controlled environment.
I always kind of felt a bit like an outsider as a kid. I didn't quite fit into a lot of friendship groups at school. I always kind of found that horror is a real safe space for feeling like that. It almost celebrates being different, feeling different. I was a bit of a goth as a teenager, so I liked horror even in terms of its aesthetic.
Mina: I saw that you've organised a MIFF Talks event, Hidden in Plain Sight: Women in Horror. That's also with Cerise Howard, who happens to be an old university teacher of mine.
Kate: Love Cerise.
Mina: Yeah, me too. I can see that there's a Women in Horror theme with MIFF this year. So how did this idea come about?
Kate: So it's born out of the documentary A Thousand Women in Horror, because the documentary goes for, let's say, 90 minutes, but it's based on a book that is quite exhaustive. Alex Heller-Nicholas is an encyclopedic brain for all things horror, but particularly things to do with women in horror.
And she's a really interesting subject because she comes from a place of having grown up being told, like most of us, that horror is not for women. Like, ‘you can't handle it’ kind of thing.
This, I find, to be completely untrue. I know so many women, so many women friends of mine who are really into horror.
Mina: I am.
Kate: Yeah, exactly, and I think the panel that we're doing seeks to explore that. Horror couldn't exist without women, even down to the fact that we're in so much of it. That's what's so interesting about that genre: it’s a great way to explore different kinds of social commentary, political commentary, or racial themes, gender politics. It's a genre that I think can explore so many kinds of themes and topics.
Mina: This might be a tricky one, but do you have a favourite horror film?
Kate: We just screened it the other night. Texas Chainsaw Massacre would probably be my all-time favourite horror movie, and we're very fortunate we have a documentary in the program called Chain Reactions, which Alex Heller-Nicholas features in as well.
Mina: Nice. Yeah, I haven't seen that one.
Kate: Oh, I highly recommend it. They screened it at the Astor last year because it was its 50th anniversary. They screened it from this grimy 35mm print, and it's fantastic; it really looks great.
Mina: All right. Well, I'll ask one more question. What do you love most about MIFF and what it brings to the Melbourne community?
Kate: Well, I think the word community there is really key. I love that it's contained in 18 days of the year when everybody comes out into the city in the middle of winter to have a collective experience. I mean, it's easy to kind of get a little bit negative about the cinema landscape at the moment. You know, people are not going out to the cinema quite as much with the rise of streaming, et cetera.
The thing I love about MIFF is that we can offer people an experience that they don't get at home. So, come and see a film with a room full of other people. Come and see a film that has a filmmaker present. Stay for the Q&A, ask a question, get involved, and get some insight into the film that you might not otherwise have had watching it in isolation. I think those things are really what make MIFF special.
Films Mentioned
