MIFF 2025 Film Review - Imagine
Images courtesy of Common State.
Imagine (2025) is a collaborative animation project by Tyson Yunkaporta and Jack Manning Bancroft that explores layered ideologies and Indigenous wisdom through the surreal journey of a teenager. While it can be underwhelming in some aspects, this film is a one-of-a-kind feature within the program at the 2025 Melbourne International Film Festival.
The film starts with Kim (Yolande Brown) being locked in their room, doomscrolling through a pastiche of social media, when suddenly, a claw appears and grabs them into the dream-like alternate world. With the help of an eccentric alien dog, Jeff (Wayne Blair), they must travel through five islands within 24 hours or be trapped in this otherworld forever. The story catalyses Kim to meet a cast of colourful characters, including a Viking chef, a cyborg shaman, and even Taika Waititi - who voices himself - wearing Michael Jackson’s Thriller jacket. These characters act as a vessel to tell the Indigenous people's multi-faceted stories and esoteric perspectives, going through themes of life-creating myth, colonisation, cultural differences, and broader Indigenous worldviews.
However, the real story of Imagine is in how it came to be. The film began development during the pandemic (hence the isolation setting) with involvement from over 150 young people through AIME’s educational project, IMAGI-NATION{TV}, not to mention support from several acclaimed actors and filmmakers. It also includes elements, mainly conversations, from the Yunkaporta’s podcast The Other Others. With its genesis being a humble Google Doc file, Imagine is an example of resilience and collaborative effort in creating art, specifically filmmaking.
The visuals of Imagine can be described as chaotically endearing. While it is no Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse in terms of groundbreaking animation, the art style employed by the filmmakers lends itself to fluidity in their art. Each island has its own identity, with the accompanying inhabitants being wonderfully designed. The incoherent animation style opens up the freedom of choices, from moody lo-fi to exploding saturation, especially in contrast to the relatively consistent Kim and Jeff. Selected scenes, like the entire trippy glowing giant green Buddha sequence, stand out as the film's visual highlight. It reflects the diverse spectrum of art that can be found across Australia, unifying while highlighting the cultural specialness of the people behind those artworks.
The voice-overs in Imagine, on the other hand, are unfortunately not memorable enough for a full-length feature animation, not to say that the performances are anything less than serviceable. Each character has their own voice, tightly delivered by their respective voice actors. However, aside from Kim and Jeff, many of the islanders’ voice clips are taken straight from their online podcast counterparts. Some of them sounded like raw Zoom calls' recordings, making it challenging to understand what they were saying. The content of the dialogues is pretty interesting, yet the quality of the recording takes the audience out of the experience and undermines the message. This also creates a disconnect between the visuals and the soundscape, which might make it less accessible to the general audience. While the intention and effort that went into this film are admirable, this one aspect might be a deal-breaking drawback for some.
Imagine, at its core, is fragmented. On the one hand, its anthology storytelling and adaptable art style allow the artists behind it to go wild with world-building, character exploration, and imaginative animation. On the other hand, the disjointed lecture-like dialogues from the islanders and varying voiceover quality leave a lot to be desired in a feature animation film of this scale. Still, one should appreciate Imagine for what it manages to achieve through the sheer perseverance of the production team and the stories it strives to tell for the Indigenous public. With that lens, the setbacks it employs only enhance how the audience, especially lovers of highly personalised art, view this film: as an utterly original, fantastic culmination of creative work that stays true to the creators’ vision to the very end.
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Imagine screened as part of the 2025 Melbourne International Film Festival. For more info, click here.