Ten Movies to Book for Now at the 2015 Sydney Film Festival

The team at the Sydney Film Festival have revealed their full 2015 program, and it is seriously impressive. Once again headed by ace festival director Nashen Moodley, this year’s festival boasts more than 250 titles, including hotly anticipated works from some of the biggest name in international filmmaking as well as plenty of hidden gems just waiting to be uncovered.

To help make your scheduling process a little bit easier, we’ve locked down ten of the most exciting titles that no self-respecting film lover can afford to miss. Whether you’re taking annual leave and pulling a five-film-a-day marathon, or just looking to catch the crème de la crème, make sure you leave room in your schedule for our selections.

STRANGERLAND

It speaks to the quality of domestic cinema in recent times that the festival will be opened and closed by Australian films, in the form of Ruben Guthrie and Holding the Man, respectively. Of all the local entries though, our pick would have to be Strangerland, a gritty outback thriller starring Nicole Kidman and Joseph Fiennes as the distraught parents of two missing teenagers, and Hugo Weaving as the local cop trying desperately to track the kids down.

Alternatively: Other notable Australian titles in the program include Last Cab to Darwin, a film about a terminally ill taxi driver travelling to the Northern Territory to commit medically assisted suicide, as well as The Daughter, theatre director Simon Stone’s modern-day take on Henrik Ibsen’s play The Wild Duck, starring Geoffrey Rush, Ewen Leslie and Miranda Otto.

TEHRAN TAXI

The winner of the prestigious Golden Bear at this year’s Berlin Film Festival, and a competitor in this year’s SFF Official Competition, Tehran Taxi is the third film made in secret by acclaimed director Jafar Panahi after being struck with a 20-year ban on filmmaking by the Iranian regime. Shot entirely within a taxi with Panahi himself at the wheel, the film provides a humorous meta-commentary on the director’s legal troubles while addressing many of the broader problems facing Iranian society at large.

Alternatively: Panahi’s dashboard camerawork isn’t the only formal boundary being broken in competition at the festival this year. Taking its cues from Rope and more recently Birdman, German heist film Victoria tells the story of a bank robbery gone wrong in a single elaborate take. American director Sean Baker, meanwhile, gets low-tech with Tangerine, a bawdy comedy about a pair of transgender sex workers shot entirely on an iPhone 5.

A PIGEON SAT ON A BRANCH REFLECTING ON EXISTENCE

With a name like that, you know it’s got to be funny. A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence marks the third and final part in a loose thematic trilogy from master Swedish filmmaker Roy Andersson. Made up of a series of strange, deadpan, tragicomic vignettes, this is a must-see film for anyone who likes their comedy a little left of centre.

Alternatively: While some people tend to think of film festivals as being mostly dour affairs, there are plenty of laughs to be found in this year’s program. American coming-of-age film Me and Earl and the Dying Girl follows a pair of tragically nerdy movie buffs making parodies of classic films, while French comedy The Price of Fame recounts a bumbling criminal plot to kidnap Charlie Chaplin’s corpse.

GOODNIGHT MOMMY

With almost half the films in the Freak Me Out section screening at the Dendy Newtown rather than in the city, horror buffs could be forgiven for feeling a little bit marginalised by festival organisers. Still, there are a number of creepy gems in the program, including this stylish Austrian entry about two young boys who suspect something is terribly wrong with their mother.

Alternatively: Kiwi horror flick Deathgasm got strong reviews out of SXSW, while anthology movie German Angst is three scary stories in one. There’s also a nice nod to retro horror, with a double feature screening of Them! and Invasion of the Body Snatchers at the Skyline Drive-In.

AMY

As always, this year’s festival has a number of must-see films for music lovers — and none more so than this hotly anticipated doco about the life of Amy Winehouse. Directed by Brazilian filmmaker Asif Kapadia, the man behind the absolutely masterful F1 documentary Senna, this new film makes extensive use of never-before-seen archival footage to paint a portrait of the pop star and her struggles with her unexpected fame.

Alternatively: Paul Dano and John Cusack star in Love & Mercy, a biopic about Beach Boys frontman Brian Wilson, while Australian documentarian Marc Eberle chronicles the rise of a Cambodian rock band in The Cambodian Space Project.

PHOENIX

One of the best reviewed pictures at last year’s Toronto International Film Festival, Phoenix marks the latest collaboration between award-winning German director Christian Petzold and lead actress Nina Hoss, whose previous film together, the Cold War drama Barbara, was one of the highlights of SFF 2012. In Phoenix, Hoss plays a concentration camp survivor who undergoes facial reconstructive surgery, only to be caught up in a strange, Hitchcockian inheritance scheme when her own husband doesn’t recognise her face.

Alternatively: Toronto isn’t the only major film festival represented at SFF this year. John Maclean’s Slow West, a western starring Michael Fassbender and Ben Mendelsohn, won the World Cinema Grand Jury Prize at Sundance, while Kore-eda Hirokazu’s Our Little Sister is one of a number of films that will arrive in Sydney directly after their premiering at Cannes.

SONG OF THE SEA

A surprise nominee in the Best Animated Film Category at the Academy Awards back in February, Song of the Sea is the new hand-drawn fantasy film from Irish animator Tomm Moore. Drawing from Celtic mythology, the film follows two children attempting to find their way home to their father with the aid of various mystical guides.

Alternatively: Get the full picture of what's going in the independent animation scene by attending the International Animation Showcase (for ten diverse shorts) and the Animation After Dark Showcase (for just the weird stuff). Avoid these if you have an actual child in tow; instead, the Kids Animation Showcase will have you both smiling.

THE TRIBE

Meanwhile, no child should be allowed anywhere near Myroslav Slaboshpytskiy’s The Tribe, which is unquestionably one of the most shocking and unsettling films you’ll see at the festival this year. Set in a Kiev boarding school for deaf teenagers, the film is told entirely through Ukrainian sign language, with no spoken dialogue or subtitles. It’s a fascinating formal exercise, albeit one that’s made very hard to watch due to the film’s unflinching depiction of sexual exploitation and violence. Obviously, this one’s not for the faint of heart.

Alternatively: Suckers for punishment can follow up The Tribe with South Korean people-smuggling drama Haemoo, or Kirby Dick’s rape-on-campus documentary The Hunting Ground. That said, we’d probably recommend getting something a little lighter in there as well, just to help break up the misery.

THE LOOK OF SILENCE

Sydney has had a remarkably strong slate of documentaries in recent times, and this year is certainly no exception. Of all the true-life stories on offer, it’s hard to go past Joshua Oppenheimer’s The Look of Silence, a companion piece to his masterful The Act of Killing, about the perpetrators of Indonesia’s violent anti-communist purges that left more than half a million people dead.

Alternatively: Honestly, we could have almost made a list of ten must-see documentaries (and maybe we will), the lineup is just that strong. In addition to the already-mentioned films from Kapadia, Oppenheimer and Dick, Oscar-winner Alex Gibney has two films in the program: Going Clear tackles the murky world of Scientology, while Mr. Dynamite chronicles the life of musician James Brown. We’re also keen to see the Australian documentaries Sherpa, about disaster on Mt Everest, and Gayby Baby, which has been gathering goodwill since its 2012 crowdfunding campaign.

JOE BULLET

One of the festival sidebars this year focuses on the cinema of South Africa. Rather than single out a contemporary film, however, we're giving the nod to this recently rediscovered blaxploitation film from 1973. Like Shaft if it had been produced under apartheid, the film follows a martial arts expert named Joe Bullet who is hot on a tail of a vicious gangster after the murder of a local soccer team. Unsurprisingly, it was banned by the South African government after just two screenings, but has now been digitally restored.

Alternatively: Necktie Youth paints a portrait of disaffected youth in modern-day Johannesburg, while award-winning documentary The Shore Break depicts a battle between local communities and developers on South Africa's Wild Coast.

The Sydney Film Festival runs June 3–14. For the full program and to book tickets, visit the festival website.

Top Image: The Look of Silence