by Nadine Whitney
Covering a broad range of genres and themes the following list includes drama, comedy, horror, science fiction, historical fiction, and biography.
Ranked in no order, here are some of the best films screened in Australia this year either through festival, general, subscription, or VOD release.
Petite Maman
Director: Celine Sciamma
Portrait of a Lady on Fire set audiences ablaze in 2019 with its passionate presentation of a short-lived but life changing affair between two women in the 18th Century. Sciamma returned to the screen with a theme that she has been dealing with through several of her works; childhood and what children know and understand.
Eight-year-old Nelly (Joséphine Sanz) travels with her parents to clear out her recently deceased grandmother’s cottage. Sciamma plants subtle clues that all is not well in the marriage between Nelly’s parents. This disconnect is further emphasised when after only one day in the cottage, Nelly’s mother leaves. Left mostly to her own devices, Nelly tries to come up with ways to keep herself occupied whilst her father continues the task of packing up the house. She meets a girl, Marion (Gabriel Sanz), of her own age in the woods and they play together.
Over the following days, Nelly realises that Marion is someone important to her, existing in a different timeline. Sciamma lets the film’s secrets unfold in a gentle manner. She wants us to know that there is more to the child’s mind than what adults assume. She weaves a spell over the audience that allows us to meditate on the nature of grief, melancholy, and loss.
Sciamma’s fairy-tale is exquisite, proving the director knows how to conjure magic in every frame.
Good Luck to You, Leo Grande
Director: Sophie Hyde
Australian director Sophie Hyde has long been interested in sex and how it impacts people at different ages. Her first feature, 52 Tuesdays not only interrogated the complications regarding sex when someone is going through gender transition, but also acted as a sexual coming-of-age story for teenager Billie (Tilda Cobham-Hervey). Her second feature Animals looked into the complex world of two women in their early thirties. Good Luck to You, Leo Grande uses sex as a way forward for a repressed religious studies teacher played by the inimitable Emma Thompson.
Essentially a two-hander, the film concerns itself with a post-menopausal widowed woman deciding to hire a sex worker so she can finally understand what the fuss is about sex. Leo Grande (Daryl McCormack) enters her life and the two come to some prickly understandings about each other.
Hyde’s work is sex-positive, funny, sad, and uplifting and showcases one of Thompson’s rawest performances. Relative newcomer Daryl McCormack is no slouch, matching Thompson’s energy with a star making performance. Hyde is three-for-three in making excellent features.
Aftersun
Director: Charlotte Wells
A festival release in Australia in 2022, and due for general release in 2023, the debut feature by Charlotte Wells is already topping many critical lists as one of the best films of the year.
Drawing from her own history, Wells tells the story of a father, Calum (Paul Mescal) and daughter, Sophie (Frankie Corio), who go on one last holiday together in a budget resort in Turkey. Calum is troubled and Sophie can feel that something isn’t right, but at her age, she can’t articulate what it is.
More than a document of the time the father and daughter spend together in a halcyon summer (in the late ‘90s) punctuated with looming tragedy, Aftersun is a coming-of-age story that weaves in the power of familial love with the idea that it is impossible to ever really know the people we are closest to. Wells’ film is filled with authenticity and heralds the emergence of a great talent.
We’re All Going to the World’s Fair
Director: Jane Schoenbrun
Non-binary writer/director Jane Schoenbrun’s We’re All Going to The World’s Fair is a study of adolescent loneliness wrapped in the skin of a genre film. Digging into the world of online lore (think Creepypasta) to capture the milieu of many chronically online teens, Schoenbrun creates an unsettling coming of age story for the internet generation.
Anna Cobb plays disenfranchised teen, Casey, who decides to take the “World’s Fair”, challenge which involves watching a strange video and monitoring for any changes in her behaviour as the video (and ritual around it) causes participants to physically morph. Schoenbrun’s horror film is beguiling and as mysterious as the premise suggests, but at its heart is a moving story of self-actualisation. It’s an amazing debut and Schoenbrun promises big things with their next work.
Also of note is that star Anna Cobb turns up in Luca Guadagnino’s Bones and All as Timothée Chalamet’s sister. Big things on the horizon coming from Schoenbrun’s independent micro-budget feature.
The Woman King
Director Gina Prince-Blythewood
The Woman King is a stellar historical epic, but like the historical epics that inspired the director such as Braveheart, Gladiator, and The Last of the Mohicans, it must be noted that the “history” part of the epic is given over to creative licence rather than exploring in-depth the reality of the events that informed the works.
Set in West Africa in 1823, the movie follows the trials of an all-woman elite fighting force known as the Agojie, the fierce protectors of the Dahomey Kingdom. Led by General Nansica (Viola Davis), the Agojie are revered in the kingdom for their skill and resolute bravery. Nansica is treated with respect by Dahomey’s young King Ghezo (John Boyega) because she assisted in the coup that put him on the throne. Nansica is trying to offer solutions to Dahomey’s complicated relationship with slavery – a practice that the kingdom has long indulged in for profit. Her words are considered by Ghezo, who is fearing the influence of the European and American trade on his kingdom, but is also preparing for all-out war with the rival kingdom of Oyo, whose power is growing due to their openness to embrace the slave trade and the advanced weaponry and wealth that come with it.
Powerhouse performances by Lashanna Lynch, Thuso Mbedu, and Sheila Atim are given more heft by the kinetic battle scenes and overall astounding costume and production design. The Woman King is Prince-Blythewood’s magnus opus and combines her action credentials with her concentration on depicting strong Black women on screen.
Nanny
Director: Nikyatu Jusu
Just as Margaret Atwood used science-fiction to address the rise of fundamentalism in America in The Handmaid’s Tale, Sengalese-American director and academic Nikyatu Jusu uses horror to address the undocumented immigrant experience in America.
Aisha (Anna Diop) is a mother living in America, separated from her son who is still in Senegal. She takes on a job as a nanny for a well-heeled couple. Soon, the job begins to consume her life as her employers take advantage of her financially and in other more disturbing ways.
Aisha is haunted by visions of Mami Wata and Anansi the Spider. Because she is so exhausted, she doesn’t truly register what the visions mean, and soon the distinction between her waking and dream life begin to blur.
Nikyatu Jusu’s film is a pertinent and all-too-real investigation of the plight of interstitial workers and the faux-liberalism that white people use to justify their actions against disadvantaged people. Nanny is a horror film, but Jusu pinpoints where the real horror exists.
Moja Vesna
Director: Sara Kern
Slovenian-Australian director Sara Kern’s debut feature Moja Vesna is an emotionally resonant and rich exploration of an immigrant family dealing with grief in the outer suburbs of Melbourne.
Moja (Loti Kovacic) is a ten-year-old girl taking on the responsibility in caring for her fractured family. Her sister, Vesna (Mackenzie Mazur) is heavily pregnant, truculent, and careless about her own life and the life growing in her. Loti has to interpret a world that is difficult to negotiate, not only because she doesn’t quite understand her sister, but also because she’s so often left to be the only conduit between Vesna and her father Milos.
Kern, in a mere twenty-five days, created a poignant and marvellous film that has won awards overseas. Australian audiences had a chance to see the film at Melbourne International Film Festival and in its cinema run in December. Not only is Moja Vesna one of the finest debuts in Australian cinema this year by a woman director, it ranks as one of the best, period.
Happening
Director: Audrey Diwan
Adapting Nobel Prize winner Anne Ernaux’s semi-autobiographical novel, Happening is the story of Anne Duchesne (Anamaria Vartolomei), a bright young literature student whose life becomes a nightmare after she finds out that she has fallen pregnant. In France in 1963, abortion was illegal and women who sought it risked at best a prison sentence, or at worst, death from backyard abortion providers. Desperate to keep studying, Anne has no intention of keeping the foetus. With the father more or less out of the picture, she suffers her pregnancy alone. When she does try to reach out for support, she is shunned by her friends
Although the film is set in 1963, it has an urgency that is vital. Abortion laws all over the world are regressing and the plight of women dealing with unwanted pregnancies could not be more fraught. Happening should be a historical document, instead it is all too contemporary. Essential viewing.
Hatching
Director: Hanna Bergholm
Hatching is a dark fairy tale about mothers, maidens, and monsters. Writer Ilja Rautsi uses and reproposes tropes long existing in folklore to create a contemporary take on the doppelgänger and the horror of excessive id triumphing over the ego.
In a pristine and vastly over-decorated suburban home, a Mother (Sophia Heikkla) obsessively films her family for her blog ‘Lovely Everyday Life.’ Her family consists of her twelve-year-old daughter, aspiring gymnast Tinja (newcomer Siiri Solilinna), her milquetoast husband (Jani Volanen), and her young son, Matias (Oiva Ollila). Mother’s family is curated to be internet perfect, just as every aspect of her life is controlled by the desire to project a sense of complete contentment.
Discontent lives in the heart of Tinja. When she finds an egg in the woods near her home, she takes it to her bedroom and secretly nurses it until an uncanny creature emerges. The creature becomes uncannier as it begins to become a version of Tinja. It’s a disruptive and at times repulsive creature that shocks the suburban family out of its fabricated domestic reverie.
Bergholm employs a rich variety of technical skills to make Hatching a haunting fable of femininity and dark desire. The puppetry and production design are astounding and Bergholm’s film is one that will linger in the mind.
She Said
Director: Maria Schrader
Documenting the investigation of Harvey Weinstein by New York Times journalists Megan Twohey (Carey Mulligan) and Jodi Kantor (Zoe Kazan), She Said is a powerful contemplation of sexual misconduct in the workplace and how men like Weinstein who believed themselves untouchable, were brought down by the hard work of journalists; but also, the bravery of women willing to go “on the record” about their experiences with the Hollywood titan.
Schrader forgoes sensationalism, allowing the story to unfold via the stories of the women involved – at no stage does the director show an assault. The story of Weinstein’s comeuppance is well known, but essentially, Schrader concentrates on the human cost behind his predatory behaviour.
Although not as hard-hitting as the Oscar winning Spotlight, She Said is a strong entry into the canon of investigative journalist movies and a reminder that when women speak together, those that have tried to silence them will hear their rallying cries.
Vesper
Directors: Kristina Buozyte and Bruno Samper
If eco-fables featuring blue aliens and potentially deadly plant life with a multi-million-dollar budget aren’t your thing, allow us to direct you to Vesper, which is an eco-fable with potentially deadly plant life on a much smaller budget, and also one of the most stylish science fiction films of the year.
Earth is in ecological collapse, and the people are ruled by fear and resource scarcity. There are two strata of society; those who live in the wastelands of the dying earth and those who live in an exclusive upper-class Citadel. Thirteen-year-old Vesper (Raffiella Chapman) is attempting to bio-hack seeds to create a sustainable food and energy source. One day, she comes across a refugee from the Citadel (Rosy McEwen) and the two soon bond.
Vesper posits some big questions – what is humanity without humanity? What is the definition of life? The spunky Vesper doesn’t quite know all the answers, but Kristina Buozyte and Bruno Sampe’s stylish film is both a gripping piece of sci-fi and a work of resonant humanism.
Playground
Director: Laura Wandel
Originally titled Le Monde (The World), Laura Wandel’s film about schoolyard bullying is strangely one of the year’s most interesting thrillers. Playground is not a thriller in the conventional sense, but the same level of intensity and uncertainty that makes the genre work, are on display in the film.
Nora (Maya Vanderberque) sees her older brother Abel (Gunter Duret) being bullied at their primary school. Abel swears Nora to secrecy about it, but she can’t help reaching out to adults in a failed attempt to protect him. Adults in the film are mostly obscured and useless people who have no idea of the tangible dangers of the playground.
Eventually, Nora encounters bullies of her own and in a sense disowns her brother to keep a level of popularity. Tables turn, and the only people who can be relied upon are the children themselves. Wandel rarely takes the focus away from Nora, and her child’s eye view is horrifying to witness. If adults think that life is hard to negotiate, they are in for a shock when they see Playground.
Defining the list was no easy task and there are so many other films that should be looked into. The following is a very brief list of recommendations.
Fresh by Mimi Cave
Neptune Frost by Anisa Uzeyman and Saul Williams
The Blue Caftan by Maryam Touzani
Turning Red by Domee Shi
Piggy by Carlota Pereda
Watcher by Chloe Okuno
Alcarràs by Carla Simon
Give Me Pity! by Amanda Kramer
Ali & Ava by Clio Barnard
Earwig by Lucile Hadžihalilović
Margrete Queen of the North by Charlotte Sieling
Bodies Bodies Bodies by Halina Reijn
Emily by Frances O’Connor
The Drover’s Wife: The Legend of Molly Johnson by Leah Purcell
Sissy by Hannah Barlow and Kane Senes
Here Out West by various
Corsage by Marie Kreutzer (in general release 2023)
With All the Beauty and the Bloodshed, Saint Omer, Women Talking, The Eternal Daughter and the titan of cinema which will be Greta Gerwig’s Barbie coming up in 2023, audiences will be thrilled by the variety of talent across the board.
