Sydney Film Festival 2017

Overview

Sydney cinephiles, we now know just what you'll be viewing across a certain 12-day block in June. After releasing a sneak peek last month, Sydney Film Festival has unveiled its massive lineup in full for its 64th year, and it comes with 288 films from 59 countries, including 37 world premieres. Oh, it features Aussie legend Ben Mendelsohn chatting about his career too.

In exciting news for fans of the ace local actor and his recent rise through Hollywood's ranks (The Dark Knight Rises, Girls, Bloodline, Rogue One — the list goes on), Mendo will be in town for an in conversation session, as well as a screening of his latest flick Una. The latter also features Rooney Mara and his Star Wars co-star Riz Ahmed, and marks the filmmaking debut of Australian theatre director Benedict Andrews.

Staying on the homegrown front, festival director Nashen Moodley is once again opening SFF with a locally-relevant title for the sixth time in a row. This year, the new effort from Samson and Delilah's Warwick Thornton is doing the honours. Enjoying its world premiere at the fest, We Don't Need a Map explores the significance of the Southern Cross as a symbol within Australian culture.

Other Aussie fare includes two films from Red Dog filmmaker Kriv Stenders: a look at our diverse society in the Bryan Brown-starring Australia Day, and a chronicle the career of one of Brisbane's greatest bands in The Go-Betweens: Right Here. Actor David Wenham turns director for the first time with Ellipsis, which is being called a Sydney-set Before Sunrise. Ali's Wedding offers up the country's first Muslim rom-com, while ecological doco Blue examines the destruction of marine life happening off of our coastline, and Otherlife serves up some sci-fi from the director of Wasted on the Young.

Given that one of SFF's main attractions is its official competition, it's hardly surprising that the festival has stacked the lineup of titles vying for its $60,000 prize with must-see flicks. We Don't Need a Map and Una are in the running, and they have plenty of company. Coming fresh from Cannes is Sofia Coppola's American Civil War thriller The Beguiled, starring Colin Farrell, Nicole Kidman, Kirsten Dunst and Elle Fanning, as well as the long-awaited return of Austrian auteur Michael Haneke courtesy of his Isabelle Huppert-led Happy End. Berlinale's Golden Bear winner On Body and Soul, and other trophy recipients Félicité and The Other Side of Hope also feature.

Those looking for familiar faces can catch Michael Fassbender, Ryan Gosling, Cate Blanchett, Natalie Portman and Mara again in Terrence Malick's Austin music scene-set love story Song to Song, plus Aubrey Plaza being hilarious in both social media satire Ingrid Goes West and nun comedy The Little Hours, and Armie Hammer smouldering up the screen in the swoon-worthy Call Me By Your Name, too. Or, get some starry monster action with closing night's Okja, with The Host and Snowpiercer helmer Bong Joon-ho taking Jake Gyllenhaal, Tilda Swinton and Paul Dano into creature feature territory.

Other general standouts include gripping transgender drama A Fantastic Woman, vintage clothing store horror flick Fashionista, and rap-focused Sundance hit Patti Cake$, as well as Julian Assange doco Risk, Johnny Rotten profile The Public Image is Rotten, and a look inside the world of competitive poultry breeding — yes, really — in Chicken People. Horror fans can get scared when a board game goes wrong in Game of Death, and see some slasher action in the Portuguese woods in The Forest of Lost Souls. Plus, SFF will shine the spotlight on female filmmakers in Europe for the second year.

Scouring through the greats of the past as well as the ace flicks of today, restorations of Aussie classics The Year My Voice Broke and The Well, erotic French drama Belle de Jour and Abbas Kiarostami's Taste of Cherry will also grace SFF's screens, alongside an already-announced retrospective of Japanese master Akira Kurosawa's works. Sydney female filmmakers from the '70s and '80s get their own sidebar, as does a showcase of modern Canadian cinema and a celebration of essential punk rock cinema.