Source : the age
The chill in the air is a sign. It’s time for the Sydney Film Festival (SFF) to get under way, with a packed 12 days of screenings from 80 countries – all the way from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe.
The 73rd festival opens at the State Theatre with director Selina Miles’ documentary Silenced, about Australian human rights lawyer Jennifer Robinson battling the weaponisation of defamation laws in the post #MeToo era, on Wednesday night.
In troubled times internationally, director Nashen Moodley says that “cinema help us make sense of the world, take us into the lives of people so far away from us, and sometimes instruct us on how – and why – to remain vigilant about our own rights and freedoms”.
The challenge is working out what to see from a jam-packed schedule. Here are 10 of the hottest tickets, including a hidden gem that Moodley recommends. Screening details are at sff.org.au.
Two weeks ago, Romanian director Cristian Mungiu’s drama, which has Sebastian Stan and Renate Reinsve as a devoutly religious couple who move with their five children to Norway, was just a promising selection in the festival’s $60,000 competition for “audacious, cutting-edge and courageous” cinema. That all changed when it won the Palme d’Or, the top prize, at Cannes, repeating Mungiu’s win with 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days in 2007.
GAIL DAUGHTRY AND THE CELEBRITY SEX PASS
This intriguingly titled American comedy, from director David Wain (Role Models), is about a high-school cheerleader turned hairdresser (Zoey Deutch) whose former football captain fiancé has slept with his celebrity crush. She learns the only way to fix their relationship is to sleep with her crush – Jon Hamm. A Wizard of Oz style adventure follows.
Fans of such gripping adventure documentaries as Free Solo and The Rescue will be keen to see Mohammed Ali Naqvi’s account of what happened when a cable car gondola carrying eight people, including six teenagers on the way to school, became stuck high above a gorge in the Pakistan mountains in 2023. When two of the three cables snap, they are all left dangling.
Hugh Jackman plays an aged and grizzled Robin Hood, grappling with a murderous past, in this fresh take on one of the great folk heroes from Michael Sarnoski (A Quiet Place: Day One). It comes with the pedigree of being snapped up by buzzy American indie distributor A24 and starring Jodie Comer, Bill Skarsgard and Murray Bartlett.
Actor turned director Olivia Wilde follows up the should-have-been-better Don’t Worry Darling with what’s been described as a highly entertaining comedy of bad manners with a side of pathos. It centres on a dinner party that a San Francisco couple (Wilde and Seth Rogen) hold for their exotic neighbours upstairs (Penélope Cruz and Edward Norton).
In her first documentary, Sofia Coppola (Lost in Translation, Priscilla) focuses on celebrated fashion designer Marc Jacobs, a longtime friend and collaborator. It centres on the 12 weeks leading up to the runway show for his spring 2024 collection. One for fans of The September Issue and The Devil Wears Prada films.
Evacuating her Malibu home during the LA fires last year, filmmaker Tamra Davis (Billy Madison) found a box of videos that she shot as then-husband Mike D performed with the Beastie Boys alongside Sonic Youth, Foo Fighters, Beck and other acts touring Australia and Asia in 1995 and ’96. She turned them into what sounds like an entertaining music travelogue.
This heavyweight crime thriller from Andrey Zvyagintsev, the exiled Russian director of The Return and Leviathan, won the Grand Prix – effectively second prize – at Cannes. Shot in Latvia, it’s about a wealthy Russian businessman (Dmitriy Mazurov) experiencing family and professional crises as Russia invades Ukraine in 2022.
With the FIFA World Cup imminent, one of the late additions to the festival is a documentary that centres on the famous 1986 World Cup game between Argentina and England amid lingering tensions from the Falklands War. Described as “joyous and poignant’, it features Maradona’s notorious Hand of God goal and his astonishing match winner.
SFF director Nashen Moodley’s hidden gem – “a brilliant Korean film by a very exciting director” – is this poignant Korean drama-meets-teen comedy from Yoon Ga-eun. It’s about a spirited and funny 17-year-old girl (Seo Su-bin) whose buried trauma resurfaces. Variety says “it rings achingly true at every humorous and heartbreaking turn”.
