by Christine Westwood
From 25th May, the lights of the Vivid turn Sydney streets into a technicolour fantasy. On 6th June and for 10 days the fairytale expands when Sydney’s annual film festival opens its theatres to delight, challenge and entertain with a rich smorgasbord of screen stories from around the world.
What makes international film festivals special is how they bring together so many divergent voices, providing a snapshot of diverse cultures, cutting edge perspectives on social issues as well as powerful and heartfelt comedy and drama.
On this, its 65th birthday, the Sydney Film Festival knows a thing or two about movie stories, having brought over 9,000 films from around the globe to Australian audiences. Nashen Moodley, well known for his passionate advocacy of films as relevant to our understanding of current cultural trends, takes the helm again. Speaking ahead of the festival launch, he said: “Over the years, much has changed in cinema, and indeed the world. What remains constant is the need for understanding. In an increasingly fragmented society, the Festival continues to unite friends and strangers, creating new experiences and ways to interpret the wider world.”
The best film festivals reflect the current zeitgeist and Sydney is no exception. LBGTQI themes are apparent, for example in The Miseducation of Cameron Post, or gender issues explored in L’Animale [pictured] as is the issue of fake news in Takaomi Ogata’s The Hungry Lion.
Then there is the timely theme of women’s power. Half the Picture, a documentary on gross inequity of female representation in the film industry, gets right to the point. Female iconoclasts are also featured in eponymous documentaries like those on designer Vivienne Westwood, rock musician Joan Jett, pop icon tragedy Whitney Houston, and the extraordinary Yayoi Kusama, a Japanese artist famous for her dot paintings, who battled mental illness and sexism to become one of the biggest selling female artists ever.
In the 120 feature films, the heart of the festival showcases solid dramas like American Animals, with the mesmerising Barry Keogh (Dunkirk, Killing of a Sacred Deer). Leave no Trace (Debra Granik, Winters Bone) follows a 13-year-old girl and her war veteran father living off the grid.
As ever, there’s a strong representation of Australian movies with features including Ben Lawrence’s Ghosthunter and Benjamin ‘Son of a Lion’ Gilmour’s Jirga about a former soldier seeking redemption in Afghanistan. Outstanding Australian directors can also be spotted in a retrospective of indigenous short films that includes Wayne Blair’s Black Talk, Warwick Thornton’s Payback and Ivan Sen’s Tears.
The opening night film promises to be an uproarious kick off to the festival. It’s the Australian premiere of The Breaker Upperers, a New Zealand comedy developed under the producing eye of Taika Waititi (Hunt for the Wildepeople), written, directed by and starring Madeleine Sami and Jacki van Beek.
Film festivals are always great for showcasing documentaries that audiences won’t see on general release. They can open windows on unique, sometimes disturbing perspectives to lives and social issues, broadening our experience beyond mainstream Hollywood themes.
57 documentaries are screening this year. Apart from the female subjects mentioned above, they include Gustavo Salmeron’s heartfelt homage to his mother in Lots of Kids, A Monkey and A Castle, Barbet Schroeder’s look at religion in The Venerable W and Filmworker about Leon Vitali, who played Lord Bullingdon in Barry Lyndon and went on to assist Stanley Kubrick until the end of his life.
Ten Australian documentaries compete for the Documentary Australia Foundation Award including the Kickstarter funded insight into boy band fans, I used to be normal and the highly anticipated Backtrack Boys.
European directors are strongly represented throughout the competition and there are nine films being screened direct from Cannes. These include three Palme d’Or nominees, notably 3 Faces from the remarkable Iranian Jafar Panahi. This is his fourth film since being banned from filmmaking in his home country.
David Stratton, himself a former director and champion of Sydney Film Festival for many years, presents a retrospective on the unique Finnish filmmaker Aki Kaurismaki (The Other Side of Hope).
Familiar faces can be seen in features like Juliet Naked, starring Rose Byrne and Ethan Hawke, The Kindergarten Teacher, pivoting on a powerhouse starring role from Maggie Gyllenhaal, and Joaquin Phoenix in Lynne Ramsay’s hardcore You Were Never Really Here.
Awards are an important part of every festival. We all look out for those emblems that tell us that festival juries have singled out a movie as the best of the best. The prize for best film in competition is $60,000, awarded at the closing day on 17 June.
Sydney’s jury includes Australians Lynette Wallworth who has garnered acclaim at Sundance Festivals for her VR documentaries, and actor Ewen Leslie (The Daughter), alongside film professionals from the Philippines, South Africa and Tokyo.
There are plenty of add-ons to the festival beyond film screenings; and presentations from directors including Andrew Kotting. His film Lek and the Dogs is inspired by the true story of a child who lived with wild dogs in Moscow. Lek is screening in a new section of the festival called FLUX “that pushes the boundaries between art and film.” There are two Australian offerings among the 8 entries. One is the world premiere of [Censored], a documentary comprised of footage cut from films by Australian censors.
The streaming platforms, TV and iphone are a great way of catching up on visual content, but we’re fundamentally a social, tribal species that needs to tell stories around the campfire. This winter, Sydney’s modern-day cinemas, lit by screens within and Vivid without, are a pretty good substitute.
The 2018 Sydney Film Festival is on between June 6 – 17.
