Sydney Film Festival
Take a giant leap into the world of movies
SYDNEY FILM FESTIVAL
returns June 5-16, and there are several reasons to be excited about this year’s event, but the main one is this: in 2019, 43 per cent of the festival’s 307 films are directed by women. Time Out has crunched the program and identified the 55 top films across nine different themes. When planning your festival, start here.
#metoo Divine Love
This Brazilian drama portrays the troubled nation eight years from now as a repressive state where sex and religion are intrinsically intertwined.
God Exists, Her Name Is Petrunya
A downtrodden woman stands up for her rights and against the mob in a feminist parable from Macedonian director Teona Strugar Mitevska.
Judy & Punch
Australian actor Mirrah Foulkes’ debut feature is a deranged feminist revenge tale about a pair of puppeteers (Mia Wasikowska and Damon Herriman) in a mythical town called Seaside.
Leftover Women
This documentary explores the plight of unmarried women in China, stigmatised for being single,and the phenomenon of ‘rent-a-boyfriends’.
Maiden
The first all-female crew to compete in the famous Whitbread Round the World yacht race shattered sexist attitudes over 30 years ago. This inspiring documentary follows the entire saga.
The Nightingale
Jennifer Kent’s searing followup to The Babadook is a period revenge piece in which a young Irish convict (Aisling Franciosi) and her Indigenous guide hunt a British officer in Van Diemen’s Land.
The Souvenir
Tilda Swinton stars alongside her daughter, Honor Swinton Byrne, in a widely acclaimed coming-of-age story from director Joanna Hogg about a shy student who becomes involved with an untrustworthy man (Tom Burke).
Untouchable
This documentary chronicles the fall of Harvey Weinstein and features interviews with several women who accused him of sexual misconduct.
Visionary women directors Animals
Australian director Sophie Hyde helms a story in which two party-hard friends in Dublin (Alia Shawkat and Holliday Grainger) deal with pressure to settle down.
Bedevil
Artist Tracey Moffatt filmed this extraordinary 1993 feature film – a trilogy of supernatural tales – on stylised studio sets. It’s eerie, bizarre, and screening as part of David Stratton’s retrospective of Australian women filmmakers.
Blinded by the Light
Director Gurinder Chandra made a star out of Keira Knightley with her 2003 film Bend It Like
Beckham. Her inspiring new film is about a Pakistani British teenager whose life changes when he discovers the music of Bruce Springsteen.
Cléo from 5 to 7
The late Agnès Varda was a towering figure of the French New Wave who explored how women are perceived in society. Ten of her best movies will screen, including this 1962 effort about a young woman waiting for results of a medical test.
Dirty God
A woman scarred after an acid attack (played by burns victim Vicky Knight) adjusts to life with her new appearance.
High Life
Robert Pattinson, Juliette Binoche and André 3000 star in a peculiar and kinky sci-fi movie for director Claire Denis, playing astronauts on board a doomed deep-space mission.
Ladyworld
A natural disaster traps eight teenage girls in a house, and things go south, Lord of the
style.
FliesLove Serenade
Shirley Barrett’s hilarious film won the Camera D’Or in Cannes in 1996, and is screening in David Stratton’s retrospective. It depicts two smalltown sisters (Miranda Otto and Rebecca Frith) who compete for the affections of an oily radio DJ (George Shevstov).
Truth to power Marighella
Wagner Moura, who played Pablo Escobar in Narcos, has made this film about the author who took on Brazil’s police state in the late 1960s. Moura will be in attendance.
O Lucky Man!
Lindsay Anderson’s surreal 1973 epic stars Malcolm McDowell ( A Clockwork Orange) as a coffee salesman whose misadventures across England skewer capitalist society. It’s screening as part of the All Night Cine Love-in marathon.
The Public
Emilio Estevez’s film concerns homeless people taking over Cincinatti’s public library to shelter from the bitter cold and has an ensemble cast including Taylor Schilling, Alec Baldwin and Michael Kenneth Williams.
XY Chelsea
The makers of this intimate portrait of whistleblower Chelsea Manning were granted exclusive access to Manning and her diaries.
Asylum seeker issues Hearts and Bones Hearts and Bones
stars Hugo Weaving as a war photographer who befriends a Sudanese refugee with whom he is connected by a photograph that threatens to destroy them both.
Manta Ray
An intriguing Thai movie involves a Rohingya refugee rescued by a Thai fisherman whose place he assumes after his mysterious disappearance.
Sanctuary
Khaled is an Iraqi-born Dutchman who worked as an interpreter for the Coalition Forces during the Second Iraq War and has been looking for a safe place to live for ten years. He didn’t find it in Australia.
Xenophobia Angelo
This Austrian film acerbically tells the story of Angelo Soliman (Makita Samba), a Nigerian slave who rose through the ranks of European society during the 18th century.
The Final Quarter
The Final Quarter follows AFL champion and Indigenous leader Adam Goodes’ public call-out of racist abuse against him.
In My Blood It Runs
In Maya Newell’s documentary, ten-year-old Aboriginal prodigy Dujuan is a child-healer, speaks two Indigenous languages, and is a great hunter, but is failing in the Australian school system.
Skin
Erstwhile Billy Elliot Jamie Bell plays a skinhead whose decision to reform himself requires the painful removal of the racist tattoos that cover his body.
Music Amazing Grace
In 1972, Aretha Franklin performed two concerts at a church in Los Angeles, which the late director Sydney Pollack filmed. After 46 years the film has finally been completed with the blessing of Franklin’s estate.
The Chills: The Triumph & Tragedy of Martin Phillipps
NZ band the Chills nearly became huge at the same time as REM and the Pixies, but were beset by appalling luck. This doco centres on the mercurial frontman and his attempt to reboot the band 20 years later.
David Crosby: Remember My Name
Rave reviews are bolstering this portrait of the ageing hippy and lynchpin of the Byrds and Crosby, Stills & Nash, who has incredible anecdotes from the 1960s.
A Dog Called Money
PJ Harvey fans will flock to see this documentary that follows Harvey during the recording of the 2016 album The Hope Six Demolition Project.
Her Smell
Elisabeth Moss plays a strungout trainwreck of an indie rocker in the early 1990s facing the decline of her career.
Miles Davis: Birth of the Cool
This portrait of the great jazz trumpeter includes early photos, home movies, recording sessions and manuscripts, along with interviews.
Mystify: Michael Hutchence
Richard Lowenstein ( Dogs in
Space) has made a documentary about the about the late INXS lead singer using a wealth of rarely seen footage.
Fascinating docos Anthropocene: The Human Epoch
Humanity’s shocking crimes against the planet play out in this agonised documentary, from the slaughter of elephants in Kenya to German villages turned into coal mines.
Apollo 11
A thrilling doco about the 1969 moon landing screens on the brink of the event’s 50th anniversary.
The Elephant Queen
Narrated by Chiwetel Ejiofor, this nature documentary portrays female leadership in the animal kingdom in the figure of Athena, mother of an elephant herd in the African savannah.
Eternity
Lawrence Johnston’s poetic 1994 Australian documentary is about the man who walked the streets of Sydney for decades writing ‘Eternity’ in chalk everywhere. It has been restored and will screen in SFF 2019.
Hail Satan? A witty doco portrays the Satanic Temple in the US, a church that believes Satan represents rebellion rather than evil. It Started with a Stale Sandwich
To mark the 50th anniversary of Kaldor Art Projects, Samantha Lang’s documentary tracks how Kaldor has brought innovative art projects to our shores.
The Miracle of The Little Prince
It’s a documentary about one of the world’s favourite books, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s The
Little Prince, and the book’s role in the preservation of Indigenous cultures and their endangered languages.
Picture Character
Where did emojis come from? Find out in this documentary about the difficulties of creating a new language :)
Horror & thriller The Dead Don’t Die
A zombie comedy from veteran indie filmmaker Jim Jarmusch Only Lovers Left Alive) ( has a cast of iconic actors: Bill Murray, Adam Driver, Chloë Sevigny, Tilda Swinton and Tom Waits.
Endzeit – Ever After
This German zombie film from director Carolina Hellsgard depicts the journey of two female friends in a world where nature has unleashed a zombie plague.
The Golem: How He Came into the World
This 1915 German Expressionist silent movie concerns a rabbi who creates a clay golem brought to life to defend the Jews. It will screen with an original live score from electronic music producer Lucrecia Dalt.
I Am Mother
In this Australian-made sci-fi thriller, Rose Byrne voices a robotic mum who is raising a teenage girl (Clara Rugaard) in the wake of an obscure apocalyptic event.
In Fabric
A stylish horror-comedy from UK director Peter Strickland ( The Duke of Burgundy) concerns a deadly designer dress that kills everyone who wears it.
Monos
Teenage bandits living rough with a hostage lose their link to a command structure and go rogue in a Colombian thriller depicting the madness of child soldiering.
Parasite
The new film by Bong Joon-ho ( Snowpiercer, Okja) won the Palme D’Or in Cannes this year and is reported to be a twisted family thriller.
The Wind
This psychological horror piece takes place in a frontier log cabin where a lone woman struggles to hold onto her sanity in a place where the wind never stops howling.
Queer Pain and Glory
Spain’s filmmaking doyen, Pedro Almodóvar, has made a thinly disguised autobiographical drama starring Cannes Best Actor Antonio Banderas.
The White Crow
Ralph Fiennes directs a biopic about the brilliant and temperamental ballet dancer Rudolf Nureyev (Oleg Ivenko) and his sensational defection from the USSR in 1961. à sff.org.au. Jun 5-16.