Overview
For Sydney-based cinephiles, there's no time of year quite like Sydney Film Festival. This year, just as Cannes concludes, it returns for its 73rd edition, taking place from Wednesday, June 3 to Sunday, June 14. This year's program is built on 248 films sourced from 81 countries, so with such an abundance of choice, you're likely to find more than enough to keep you busy for the festival's duration.
With a program this big, we may as well start with the biggest moments. Opening the festival during the Opening Night Gala on June 3 will be the Australian premiere of Silenced, a documentary from Selina Miles that follows human rights lawyer Jennifer Robinson fighting against the weaponisation of defamation law to be used against survivors and journalists.
This year's Sydney Film Prize competition will see a number of major entries vying for the $60,000 prize. Including but not limited to the postwar Germany set, Sandra Hüller (Project Hail Mary)- starring Fatherland, a taut and provocative thriller set in the tinderbox of 2022 Russia in Minotaur, the Léa Seydoux (No Time to Die)-starring Gentle Monster, a thought-provoking drama set around parenting styles starring Sebastian Stan (The Apprentice) and Renate Reinsve (Backrooms) in Fjord, and the Australian-made queer romance horror Leviticus.
Other films running in the competition include the emotional story of reconciliation in the wake of the Rwandan Genocide, Ben'Imana, a near-future drama where grieving parents turn to AI to rebuild their family, Sheep in the Box, a comedic dinner-party turned sexual awakening in Olivia Wilde's The Invite, an intoxicating mission set in the lawless Bulgarian borderlands in The Dreamed Adventure and No Good Men, a political rom-com examining sexism and relationships in Afghanistan before the 2021 Taliban takeover.
Beyond the competition, a number of major stars, both local and international, feature in the festival lineup. There's Hugh Jackman's part as a dying outlaw king alongside Jodie Comer in the gritty historical fiction The Death of Robin Hood, there's also the true story of a dramatic 1977 hostage situation between a disgruntled developer (Bill Skarsgård) and an insurance executive (Dacre Montgomery) in Dead Man's Wire.
There's also a 1980s NYC-set queer love story starring Rami Malek in The Man I Love; a chronicle of Vladimir Putin's rise to power starring Jude Law and Paul Dano in The Wizard of the Kremlin; Pressure, starring Andrew Scott as a meteorologist who must help decide to launch the D-Day invasion, a satire of privilege starring Elle Fanning, Callum Turner and Riley Keough in Rosebush Pruning and a one-of-a-kind psychosexual horror remake starring Hannah Einbinder and Gillian Anderson, Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma.
The Documentary Australia Award also returns with a lineup of true stories sourced from around the world. That includes the cross-country adventure of a lifetime for four young Queensland bull riders in Rodeo Dreams, an eight-year profile of a piano doctor in The Piano Tuner, the story of a six-day, tight-budget mockbuster action film production in suburban Adelaide in Mockbuster, the world's greatest whistling competition in Whistle, and an Indigenous PNG community's fight against a project that would pollute the river they depend on in Sukundimi Walks Before Me.
Other documentaries outside of the program include an award-winning look into a friendship between an ageing Macedonian farmer and a stork in The Tale of Silyan, an equally hopeful and disturbing look into the wild frontier of AI, starring those who create it and those who caution against it in The AI Doc: Or How I Became an Apocaloptomist; a portrait of two Indigenous Mexican mycologists preserving ancient knowledge alongside modern science in Daughters of the Forest; an award-winning documentary on polar bears in Manitoba in Nuisance Bear; a love story between a Lebanese journalist and Syrian camerman told across 13 years in Birds of War and many, many more.
Miniaturised programs return, bringing lineups of new and restored films organised around themes like fashion, art, music, sustainability, disability, European female and genderqueer filmmakers, indigenous films, family films, the strange and scary and more — including a program of Brazilian films curated by the Oscar-nominated director Kleber Mendonça Filho (The Secret Agent) and a retrospective on the pioneering work of the late great Barbara Hammer.
As for the theme that unites them all? As Festival Director Nashen Moodley puts it, "We want to invite you to join us at SFF this year, where each moment offers an opportunity for discovery and empathy. Art and cinema help us make sense of the world, take us into the lives of people far away from us, and remind us to remain vigilant about our own rights and freedoms. And we can't forget, they're also an enormous source of joy."
We could go on and on. As mentioned, there are hundreds of films to choose from and only twelve days to see them all. So don't wait any longer, open up your calendar and book tickets or a flexipass to catch as many films as humanly possible — 'tis the season.
Visit the Sydney Film Festival website for more information or to get tickets.
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