By Travis Johnson
It’s the 10th year of SUFF! Taking place at the Factory Theatre Marrickville from September 15 – 18, the Sydney Underground Film Festival is your one stop shop for provocative and transgressive cinema, with over 100 films screening over four days.
The big gun this year is opening night film Weiner-Dog, the latest offering from Todd Solondz (Happiness). A brutal anthology comedy consisting of four stories linked by the titular dachshund, the film boasts an incredible ensemble cast, including Danny DeVito, Ellen Burstyn, Kieran Culkin, Julie Delpy, Tracy Letts and Zosia Mamet.
Other highlights include Steve “Sightseers” Oram’s AAAAAAAAH!, which wowed and disturbed audiences at the Revelation Film Festival, the horror-comedy Trash Fire from director Richard Bates Jr. (Suburban Gothic) and starring Adrian Grenier (Entourage), and Antibirth, which sees Natasha Lyonne (Orange Is The New Black) as a party girl who wakes up with a bizarre illness and reality altering visions.
Documentaries this year include A Room Full of Spoons (if Tommy Wiseau doesn’t lawyer up again), Hooligan Sparrow, and the Redfern-set 57 Lawson.
To mark SUFF’s tenth birthday, this year sees SUFF Blast From The Past, a short film season collecting some of the most outre and memorable short studies to grace the festival. Plus, we’re getting a 25th anniversary screening of David Cronenberg’s Naked Lunch and a 40th anniversary screening of the remastered Carrie, which pairs nicely with the all-by-all-accounts-amazing documentary, De Palma, which is also on the slate.
“Indeed the pressure is on when you come up to your 10th birthday,” festival director Stefan Popescu observed. “However we think we have put together a killer program and it’s no word of a lie when we say that we have put together something for everyone.”
For tickets and session times, head over to the official SUFF site.
