This year’s Festival is the first annual event, following the South Australian Government’s announcement earlier this year that AFF, established in 2003 as a biennial event, will now be held every year.
The AFF program features 129 films – with 22 World Premieres and 32 Australian Premieres. Renowned for innovation, the 2022 AFF also sees an enhanced visual arts program, with cutting edge screen installations presented with AFF partners The Art Gallery of South Australia and Samstag Museum of Art.
Bookended by local South Australian talent, AFF will open with a celebration of one of Australia’s great bands – The Angels – in a documentary directed by Adelaide’s Madeleine Parry, and will close with the feature debut Talk to Me, by the RackaRacka brothers, Daniel and Michael Philippou.
The Opening Night Gala sees AFF present the World Premiere of The Angels: Kickin’ Down The Door, screening at AFF’s principal partner venue, Palace Nova Eastend, with an after-party for the ages where The Angels will perform live. Opening Night also features the World Premiere of Marungka Tjalatjunu (Dipped in Black), a multi- disciplinary artwork created by Yankunytjatjara artist Derik Lynch and Australian artist Matthew Thorne.
After racking up a billion views on their RackaRacka YouTube channel, the internationally renowned Philippou brothers make it to the big screen with the Closing Night film, Talk to Me, the story of a lonely teenager, Mia, who gets hooked on conjuring spirits using a ceramic hand. Talk to Me, an Adelaide Film Festival Investment Fund film, screens at Adelaide’s iconic Her Majesty’s Theatre.
Also at Her Majesty’s, AFF is proud to announce that it will host the Australian premiere of Carmen, direct from its World Premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival. A visual and aural feast, Carmen is the directorial debut of Benjamin Millepied, celebrated choreographer (Black Swan) and one of the world’s acclaimed dancers (former principal soloist New York City Ballet). This dazzling modern-day retelling of one of history’s most famous love stories and operas, features a new music score by Nicholas Britell (Moonlight) and stars Melissa Barrera (In the Heights), Paul Mescal (Lost Daughter) and Rossy de Palma (Parallel Mothers) in an explosion of dance and passion. Carmen, a French/Australian co-production, was partially filmed on location in South Australia and supported by the Adelaide Film Festival Investment Fund and produced by the intimable Rosemary Blight (The Sapphires, Top End Wedding).
Established in 2007, the Feature Fiction Competition at the AFF was the first of its kind in Australia. The Competition celebrates bold storytelling, innovative filmmaking and overall fabulous films.
This year’s Competition Jury is Ali Gumillya Baker, a visual artist, performer, filmmaker and academic, South Australian producer Lisa Scott (The Tourist, A Sunburnt Christmas), Samoan-born New Zealand director Tusi Tamasese (The Orator 2011 Venice Orizzonti; One Thousand Ropes 2017 Berlinale – Panorama), film critic and author Luke Buckmaster, and Jim Kolmar, who programs for SXSW, Trinidad & Tobago Film Festival, and was a founding committee member of Festival Internacional de Cine Tulum (FICTU).
Films In Competition include the Australian premiere of Heusera, a deeply unsettling, psychological horror that plays on the unspoken loss of identity that comes with motherhood by Mexican director Michelle Garza Cervera; Riley Keough’s War Pony, made in collaboration with South Dakota’s Oglala Lakota community; the Romanian/French film Metronom, winner of the Best Direction prize at Cannes (Alexandru Belc); Whina, the sweeping biopic of iconic Maori elder and activist, Whina Cooper, directed by James Napier Robertson and Paula Whetu Jones; and the genre-defying Mexican feature Sansón and Me by award-winning filmmaker Rodrigo Reyes whose films push the boundaries of documentary and fiction.
AFF warmly welcomes new venue partner the Capri Theatre for a weekend of special presentations of the very best films from the international film festival circuit, including the Australian premieres of Tár, fresh from the Venice Film Festival and the film that has critics speculating about the awards to be won by its star Cate Blanchett and director Todd Field, and the Irish drama The Banshees of Inisherin, starring Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson; as well as the previously announced films My Policeman, with Harry Styles in his first major film role, which has its Australian premiere in Adelaide, fresh from its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival; and Aftersun, the breakout hit if this year’s Cannes International Film Festival with rising star Paul Mescal (Normal People).
Competing for AFF’s annual Change Award, established in 2020, include the films EO, from veteran Polish master Jerzy Skolimowsky who dares us to imagine how animals see the world in this utterly unconventional story; Into the Ice, filmed in a glacier in Greenland, an enviro-doc that turns data collection into a compelling action-adventure epic (directed by Denmark’s Lars Ostenfeld; and Fashion Reimagined, about a remarkable global quest to produce a sustainable collection by 2017 Vogue Designer of the Year Amy Powney (directed by Becky Huntner). Also competing for the Change Award is Luku Ngarra, an Indigenous funded documentary on the history and culture of Arnehm Land through the eyes of traditional lawmen and elders including Rev Dr Djiniyini Gondarra OAM who will be a guest of the festival.
AFF continues its tradition of presenting the best of world cinema with Australian premieres of films from more than 40 countries, including, from Hong Kong, A New Old Play, in which one of China’s most innovative, critically acclaimed and entertaining artists/filmmakers, Qiu Jiong-jiong, gives us an insight into China from the 1920s to the 1980s through the eyes of Qiu Yu, a Sichuan opera clown based on the director’s own famous grandfather; La Jauría, winner, Grand Prize, Critics’ Week, Cannes, from Colombia’s Andrés Ramírez Pulido; the Australian premiere of Japan’s Baby Assassins, about two graduating schoolgirls who moonlight as assassins (director Hugo Sakamoto) and the first Pakistani film to premiere at Cannes, Joyland, a visually layered, heartfelt transgender romantic drama that gently hones in on the ways social taboos can restrict our true selves, from director Saim Sadiq.
The Australian premiere of The Hamlet Syndrome, Locarno Film Festival Grand Prix winner, will be presented by director Elwira Niewiera in attendance from Poland. This documentary theatre project created by a group of young people combines the themes of Hamlet with their experiences of combat in the lead up to the current Russian invasion of Ukraine. Niewiera will join acclaimed Adelaide theatre director Chris Drummond for an expanded discussion open to schools.
Also screening in the World Cinema program is Lone Wolf, starring Adelaide favourite, Tilda Cobham-Hervey, in which director Jonathan Ogilvie updates Joseph Conrad’s The Secret Agent to contemporary Australia where the surveillance state and digital technology have turned us all into subjects of the camera; as well as Sweet As, winner of the recent CinefestOz best film prize and Melbourne International Film Festival’s Innovation award, from Australian First Nations director Jub Clerc, one of Australia’s most exciting new cinema talents; and the Sydney Film Festival opening night film We Are Still Here, a stunning anthology that is a deafening, defiant roar in response to 250 years of colonialism, made by ten Indigenous directors from Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific Islands.
The October program will see 15 much anticipated AFF Investment Fund (AFFIF) works unveiled and celebrated with a series of parties and gala events. In addition to Carmen, Talk to Me and the previously announced Carnifex (the debut feature from South Australian director Sean Lahiff) and the documentary The Last Daughter, directed by Brenda Matthews and Nathaniel Schmidt, they include, legendary Australian director and AFF favourite Rolf de Heer’s new feature The Survival of Kindness, Watandar, My Countryman about Afghani/Australian photographer Muzafar Al’s exploration of his identity through the history of Afghani’s in Australia and, in the year of the 50th anniversary of the Aboriginal Tent Embassy, Larissa Behrendt’s You Can Go Now, about First Nations artist and activist, Richard Bell, in parallel with Bell’s visual art installation Embassy forming part of AFF’s exciting moving image art program. Presented as part of Tarnanthi, AGSA’s acclaimed continuous celebration of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art, Embassy is inspired by the Aboriginal Tent Embassy, the protest camp set up 50 years ago on the lawns of Parliament House in Canberra. This installation will be exhibited on the AGSA forecourt from Sat 22 – Sun 23 October.
AFF is proud to present the World Premiere of another AFFIF documentary feature The Giants, directed by Laurence Billet’s, about Bob Brown and the life of trees. Bob Brown, last year’s recipient of The Bettison & James Award, will be a guest of the Festival. In a presentation at AFF, the former Federal Greens Senator will offer insights into the majesty of Tasmania’s Tarkine, sharing his firsthand encounters of frontline resistance and why action to protect Adelaide’s nearest great rainforest is urgently required.
The 2022 Bettison & James Award, administered by the Adelaide Film Festival on behalf of the Jim Bettison and Helen James Foundation, was tonight awarded – at AFF’s official program launch – to Pat Rix, a respected artistic director with significant experience creating collaborative community and mainstage productions in Australia, the US and South East Asia. For over 30 years, Pat has worked with people from diverse backgrounds and organisations to build inclusive, respectful relationships across social, geographical and cultural divides. As an artist, her belief is that in order to have a voice, people need a place to speak from. Such a place must be a force for social change and allow new spaces for thinking and knowing to emerge. Pat’s unshakeable belief led to the development of a unique organisation where artists make amazing work across all art forms, celebrating the power of disability culture and complexity of human life.
Pat Rix will also speak at AFF, in an in-depth interview about her lifetime journey building an artistic community based on trust and respect.
The Adelaide Film Festival Board presents the Don Dunstan Award in recognition of an individual who has made an outstanding contribution to Australian screen culture.
Previous recipients include Andrew Bovell, Bruna Papandrea, Judy Davis, Freda Glynn, David Dalaithngu Gulpilil AM, Rolf de Heer, Scott Hicks, Dennis O’Rourke and the combined contributions of David Stratton AM and Margaret Pomeranz AM.
The 2022 Don Dunstan Award recipient is David Jowsey. David is one of Australia’s major screen industry figures. Establishing BUNYA Productions with frequent collaborator Ivan Sen, and working closely with co- managing director and head of television Greer Simpkin, David has been instrumental in developing many of the most memorable film and television projects of recent years, including the Mystery Road film and television series. David’s films have been awarded at major international film festivals, where he is renowned for his commitment to bringing the work of Indigenous storytellers to the screen. The Adelaide Film Festival is proud to recognise David Jowsey’s achievements and showcase his storied career and collaborators.
In announcing the 2022 AFF program, Mat Kesting, AFF CEO & Creative Director, said: “Adelaide Film Festival is a home for the courageous creatives at the frontier of film art and those who help to forge our national identity through the exploration (and creation) of ideas and culture.
“The Festival is proud to present the directorial debuts of directors, Australian and international, alongside a diverse array of extraordinary and award-winning films from around the globe, and welcome a growing Australian guest list including AFF patron Margaret Pomeranz, Dr Bob Brown, David Jowsey, the Angels, the RackaRacka Brothers, Brenda Matthews, Rev Dr Djiniyini Gondarra OAM, Richard Bell, Soda Jerk and Lynette Wallworth, in addition to international guests we look forward to announcing soon.”
“Our program showcases an incredible cross-section of remarkable screen talent and we can’t wait to welcome audiences and filmmakers to this, our first annual AFF, for 12 days of cinema immersion.”
Minister for Arts, Andrea Michaels, said: “The AFF team is to be congratulated for curating this outstanding program of films that includes directorial debuts and award-winning films from both Australia and the rest of the world. I am particularly pleased to see the program opens and closes with local South Australian talent. The South Australian Government‘s additional $2 million investment to annualise the AFF will give a major boost to the contribution already made by the AFF to the local creative sector over the past 20 years.”
