Overview
No one just throws together a film festival program. For 18 years now, Sydney Underground Film Festival has carefully curated annual lineup after annual lineup, giving Harbour City cinephiles a feast of movies at their most surreal and sublime again and again. But if Sydney has ever boasted a film fest that's as much about rocking up and seeing where the mood takes you as it is about making a date with specific flicks, it's this one. Here, a conversation waiting in line for one movie might lead you to your next.
To mark its latest milestone — turning 18 is no small feat for any film festival, let alone an independent fest that called Marrickville's Factory Theatre home for years, and now takes place at Dendy Newtown — SUFF has another astutely picked program on offer. Across a four-day run between Thursday, September 12–Sunday, September 15, everything from classic John Waters to Kristen Stewart's latest awaits. If past fests are any guide, it'll also sport one of the best vibes in both Sydney's and Australia's festival scenes, where feeling like you're about to discover something wild and wonderful is always in the air.
Trust SUFF to open its 18th fest with Waters' Female Trouble, which also has an occasion to commemorate: its 50th anniversary. The Divine-led film is screening with scratch 'n' sniff cards for the full sensory experience. The one and only Waters is an interviewee in closing night's Scala!!!, too, about the London cinema in the same name. The rest of the documentary's title is Or, The Incredibly Strange Rise and Fall of the World's Wildest Cinema and How It Influenced a Mixed-up Generation of Weirdos and Misfits, which gives viewers an idea of the kind of tale it's telling.
Stewart fans should have Sacramento on their must-see list, with the Love Lies Bleeding, Crimes of the Future and Spencer actor co-starring in the road-trip film with Michael Cera (Dream Scenario), Maya Erskine (Mr & Mrs Smith) and Michael Angarano (Oppenheimer), the latter of whom also writes and directs.
SUFF's roster of pictures with big-name ties also covers documentary Michel Gondry: Do It Yourself, about the Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind filmmaker; Daaaaaali!, which sees Rubber and Deerskin's Quentin Dupieux explore iconic artist Salvador Dalí in the director's usual offbeat way; and The Visitor from Bruce La Bruce (Saint-Narcisse), which pays tribute to Pier Paolo Pasolini's Teorema. Or, there's the Village People in Can't Stop the Music — and yes, dressing up to attend the screening is encouraged.
Other highlights span black comedy Mother Father Sister Brother Frank, page-to-screen horror-thriller Saint Clare, more road trips with RATS!, and We Are Zombies from the team behind Turbo Kid and Summer of 84. If you caught stunning 2018 animation The Wolf House on the festival circuit — including at SUFF 2019 — Chilean filmmakers Cristóbal León and Joaquín Cociña are back with The Hyperboreans.
"At SUFF, we're all about celebrating the wild, the weird and the wonderfully unexpected. This year's festival will take you on a journey through cinema's most daring corners — where anything can happen and usually does," explains Festival Director Nathan Senn.
"Our lineup of films is a testament to the fearless creativity of filmmakers who dare to challenge, provoke and entertain, and we can't wait for our audience to join us for the ride."
Sydney Underground Film Festival 2024 screens at Dendy Newtown, King Street, Newtown, from Thursday, September 12–Sunday, September 15. For further information, or to buy tickets, head to SUFF's website.