Darwin International Film Festival

Darwin International Film Festival Announces 2015 Program Launch

The Darwin International Film Festival has launched its official program at Deckchair Cinema over the weekend. A full line-up of films, workshops and events curated by an expert panel has been announced, with this year’s program resulting in all films having their Northern Territory premieres at the festival. Countries featured include Brazil, India, Germany, Poland and more,…

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Film Review: Darwin International Film Festival Closing Night: Your Sister’s Sister (2012 USA)

Jack (Mark Duplass) is mourning the loss of his brother. After a mild implosion at a memorial ceremony, his best friend, also his brother’s ex, Iris (Emily Blunt) orders him to some alone time in her father’s cabin in the wintery woods on an Island off Washington State. But Iris’ sister, Hannah (Rosemarie Dewitt), has…

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Film Review: Darwin International Film Festival: On The Road (2012 USA)

Kerouac’s classic Beat-generation manifesto On The Road transforms to the big screen in all its pulsing, joyful free-wheeling madness, complete with crazy cats, hustlers, junkies, and poets. Brazilian director Walter Salles (Central Station) and screenwriter Jose Rivera (The Motorcycle Diaries) deliver a pitch-perfect manifestation of the cult classic, transporting the viewer to the time and…

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Darwin International Film Festival Review: Flowers of War (2011 China/USA – Australian Premiere)

The horror of war is painted with devastating clarity in Flowers of War, a historical fiction drama by director Zhang Yimou (Hero, House of Flying Daggers). Set during the 1937 Japanese massacre in Nanjing, under imminent occupation, the city is reduced to dusty rubble and the last remaining citizens are fleeing for their lives amid…

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Film Review: Darwin International Film Festival: Lore (2012 Australia/Germany – MA15+)

An Australian-German collaboration by director Cate Shortland (Somersault) and based on Rachel Seiffert’s 2001 Booker Prize short-listed novel ‘The Dark Room’, Lore follows the journey of Lore (Saskia Rosendahl), the daughter of an SS officer at the fall of the Third Reich, forced to flee her home with her four young brothers and sisters when…

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Darwin International Film Festival Review: I, Anna (UK/Germany/France, 2012)

A noir thriller set in grey, low-lit London and based on the Elsa Lewin’s 1990 novel of the same name, I, Anna is the directorial debut of Barnaby Southcomb. Beginning with a series of narrative threads woven together through a mosaic of flashbacks, the film draws on the classic murder mystery genre, with Anna (Charlotte…

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Darwin International Film Festival Review: Beauty (South Africa, 2011)

Set in South Africa, Beauty is a sombre meditation on masculinity and sexuality. François (Deon Lotz) is an Afrikaanner family man, who, at the film’s opening is celebrating his daughter’s wedding. He is affluent, ordinary, respected and liked. But, as suggested by the film’s opening shot – a long-angle zoom, ever so slowly drawing in…

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Film Review: Darwin International Film Festival: Once Upon a Time in Anatolia (2011 Turkey – CTC)

Winner of the Cannes Grand Prix, Once Upon a Time in Anatolia follows the overnight and early morning journey through the wind-swept Anatolian steppes of a group of forensic and law enforcement officers along with two murder suspects in search of a body they buried, but can’t remember where. It’s a long night, and as…

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Darwin International Film Festival Opening Night Review: Farewell My Queen (2012 France – CTC)

Set on the eve of the French Revolution (and based on the novel of the same name by Chantal Thomas, winner of French literary award the Prix Femina in 2002), Farewell My Queen, follows a fictional account of the early stages of the monarchy’s epic downfall through the eyes of the court’s peons – specifically…

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