Sydney Film Festival

Sydney Film Festival Review: Jirga (Australia, 2017) is a humane look behind the curtain of war

That Jirga is quiet and understated is the film’s biggest strength, consciously moving away from the lurid details of your typical war blockbuster and presenting something of a bare-bones human story about redemption and forgiveness. When Director Benjamin Gilmour and actor Sam Smith, both Australian, spent 20 days shooting this film they did so at…

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Sydney Film Festival Review: The Wife (Sweden/UK, 2017) is a slow-burning & tense character study about a woman’s conflicting emotions

The title of the film, The Wife, gives away about as much as the titular character. Is she a good one? A bad lady? The answer is a mystery for a large portion of this slow-burning character study. One thing’s for certain, this wifey is brimming with conflicting emotions in this bittersweet, character-driven drama. Glenn…

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Sydney Film Festival Review: The Breaker Upperers (New Zealand, 2018) is immensely entertaining, genuinely hilarious, and wonderfully heartfelt

Given that we can almost outsource every chore, errand, and activity that come our way, it only makes sense that the unfortunate responsibility that is breaking up with someone be a lucrative business too.  Enter The Breaker Upperers, a duo of frozen-hearted, screwed-over singletons who appear more than happy to break the heart of someone…

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Sydney Film Festival Review: Beirut (USA, 2018) is an absorbing thriller that doesn’t break convention

Aided by a sense of retro charm and bathed in a yellowy hue that appears to be the go-to filter for Hollywood’s take on anything Middle East, Brad Anderson‘s Beirut is an absorbing thriller that doesn’t break convention, but manages a certain robustness that keeps it sailing along with intrigue. Opening in 1972, the titular…

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Sydney Film Festival Review: Westwood: Punk, Icon, Activist (UK, 2018) is about a style iconoclast & punk who became one fine dame

Westwood: Punk, Icon, Activist shares some things in common with David Bowie’s song, “Fashion” and not just for the obvious fact that Vivienne Westwood is a fashion designer. Consider Bowie’s “Listen to me- don’t listen to me/Talk to me- don’t talk to me/Dance with me- don’t dance with me, no” lyrics. It’s a curious dance…

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Sydney Film Festival Review: Nico, 1988 (Italy, 2017) shows the songstress left behind after all tomorrow’s parties

A bio-pic can be a tricky beast. When a person has achieved so much in their lifetime what part of the story do you focus on? If you’re Italian director, Susanna Nicchiarelli you eschew the obvious and omit the lauded days. Nicchiarelli instead focuses on later life and this is precisely the scene we are…

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Sydney Film Festival Review: Chef Flynn (USA, 2018) is as neat & tidy as an entrée but you will probably be left wanting more

It’s fair to say that most of us home cooks are more like Nailed It! contestants than MasterChefs. So imagine how surprising it is to see a young child cooking up fine dining dishes with aplomb. Chef Flynn is a documentary about Flynn McGarry, this particular child prodigy. While it’s an entertaining story you can’t…

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Sydney Film Festival Review: The Seagull (USA, 2018) is a charming bore

Despite scene-swallowing work from Annette Bening (fabulous, as to be expected), the quiet mastery of Saoirse Ronan, and a brilliantly comical Elisabeth Moss, Michael Mayer‘s The Seagull (adapted from Anton Chekhov‘s classic play) fails to deliver them material worthy of their considerable talent. The story has all the right ingredients to be a farce of…

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Sydney Film Festival Review: Nature and nurture square off in the fascinating Three Identical Strangers (UK, 2018)

BAFTA-nominated documentary director Tim Wardle has an enviable subject with the highly publicised reunion of long-lost-triplets Robert Shafran, Eddy Galland and David Kellman, who found each other at the age of 19, tracking three identical New Yorkers separated at birth by a prominent Jewish adoption agency. It’s the kind of stranger-than-fiction story that the most…

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Sydney Film Festival Review: The Heiresses (Paraguay, 2018) is a low-key, yet compelling character study

If one were to describe this film briefly, The Heiresses could be seen a cross between Wong Kar-wai‘s Happy Together and Albert and David Maysles‘ Grey Gardens. As Kar-wai says about the title of his film, being happy together is being happy with oneself, and it is within that context is where the journey in…

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Sydney Film Festival Review: Cold Blooded: The Clutter Family Murders (USA, 2017) is more than just the making of two murderers

In a small town in Kansas the residents kept their doors locked until the day a brutal, quadruple murder rocked the neighbourhood. The scene is a tragic and hard one to fathom but in a complicated turn of events these also became famous thanks to the writer, Truman Capote and his seminal book. Cold Blooded:…

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Red Carpet Photos: The Breaker Upperers opens the 2018 Sydney Film Festival

The stars came out for the Opening Night of the 2018 Sydney Film Festival at the State Theatre earlier tonight for the premiere of the anticipated New Zealand film The Breaker Upperers. Nathan Atkins was on the caroetband brings us these photos: [print_gllr id=50064] ———- This content has recently been ported from its original home…

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Sydney Film Festival Review: Disobedience (UK/USA, 2018) is a subtly compelling look into hidden passions and forbidden love

To say that the expectations for this film are quite high is quite superfluous, but it has to be said nonetheless. We have Rachel Weisz, one of the most talented actresses in Hollywood, who’s had a great run of recent films ever since starring in the weird and sweet quasi-dystopian romance The Lobster, and still…

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Sydney Film Festival finds its musical note with Sounds On Screen program

Music and movies will collate as one throughout this year’s Sydney Film Festival with the Sounds On Screen program.  Highlighting a series of musical-themed documentaries, as well as several feature films with a strong musical influence, the titles on hand promise to both entertain and inform. Influential rock singer Joan Jett (Bad Reputation), controversial British-Sri…

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Spike Lee and Jordan Peele release trailer for new film BlackkKlansman as it premieres at Cannes

An undercover thriller directed by Spike Lee and produced by Jordan Peele, adapting the real life story of a Colorado Springs black police officer who infiltrated the Klu Klux Klan in the 1970s? This is going to be good. Focus Features has lifted the lid on the first trailer for BlackKkKlansman, a film which is…

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Sydney Film Festival reveals seven sinister films for their “Freak Me Out” program

Fans of the dark, weird and macabre side of cinema are once again in for a treat as Freak Me Out returns to the 65th annual Sydney Film Festival. As one of the event’s most popular programs, the collection has once again been carefully stitched together with a far-reaching, open-minded sense of curation from guest…

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Six Must-See Documentaries at the 2018 Sydney Film Festival

The 2018 Sydney Film Festival program has dropped and it features some amazing local and international documentary films. Here’s our guide to the festival’s six best documentaries: Cold Blooded: The Clutter Family Murders Before Making A Murderer and The Jinx there was Truman Capote and his famous, true crime book, In Cold Blood. Enter Cold…

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Sydney Film Festival showcases Indigenous films from around the world with First Nations: A Celebration program

Sydney Film Festival in conjunction with Screen Australia will be marking Screen Australia’s Indigenous Department’s 25th anniversary with a very special program titled First Nations: A Celebration. This will also be featured alongside a program retrospective of short films funded by the Indigenous Department, From Little Things Big Things Grow. The program will showcase documentaries…

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Australian actress Marta Dusseldorp to chair the 2018 Lexus Australia Short Film Fellowship Jury

Lexus Australia and Sydney Film Festival have announced leading Australian actress Marta Dusseldorp (A Place to Call Home) will chair the 2018 Lexus Australia Short Film Fellowship Jury. Jury Chair Marta Dusseldorp commented on the event saying, “The Lexus Australia Short Film Fellowship for 2018 will give four Australian filmmakers the support to carry on telling…

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Sydney Film Festival reveals a diverse and progressive program for its 65th year

As if you would expect anything less, the Sydney Film Festival has once again come through with an exciting, diverse and progressive program for its 65th iteration. Set for 6th to 17th June, the lauded festival is looking to be as immersive and thought-provoking as ever with a program that reaches far beyond the Official…

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Film Review: Ghost Stories (UK, 2018) is a refreshing and original horror anthology

With high replay value and some clever pacing, Andy Nyman and Jeremy Dyson have transposed their West End play Ghost Stories to the big screen with a refreshing eye for originality, spinning a grand three-part horror anthology into one thoroughly entertaining and unpredictable film that never stops subtly building towards its tremendous finale. And that’s…

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The Sydney Film Festival announces 2018 dates

The Sydney Film Festival returns once again to celebrate its 65th anniversary, taking place from the 6-17 June, 2018. The festival aims to bring the world’s best and newest films to Sydney over a 12 day period complete with premieres, talks, parties, director and actor guests and much more. Over 250 films from all over…

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Film Review: I Am Not Your Negro (USA/France, 2016) is a powerful and evocative look at the Civil Rights Movement

America has long been a country divided, afflicted by the separation between white and black men and it still continues to this day. I Am Not Your Negro is a unique documentary that is an analysis of the civil rights movements of the 50’s and 60’s right through to the current Black Lives Matter movement….

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Director Bong Joon-Ho on bringing Okja to life, and the creative freedoms of Netflix

Netflix’s new film Okja hits the streaming service this Thursday, a film whose director Bong Joon-Ho has citied George Miller’s Babe: Pig in the City amongst its influences. With the acclaimed Korean director in Sydney for the Sydney Film Festival, where Okja sat as the closing film, I caught up with the man himself (and…

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Sydney Film Festival Review: Vaya (South Africa, 2016) is a brutal coming of age story set in an unforgiving Johannesburg

Like it’s Tsotsitaal namesake meaning “to go”, Vaya, Directed by Akin Omotoso, literally begins on the move. Opening on a train bound to Johannesburg Vaya follows the intertwining paths of three young South Africans journeying from their rural homes in Kwazulu-Natal to eGoli, the city of Gold. All three are tasked with their own promises…

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Sydney Film Festival Review: A Quiet Dream (Korea, 2016) wakes up an invisible side of Seoul

Placing itself somewhere between the genres of mumblecore and slice of life, A Quiet Dream directed by Zhang Lu, is an almost observational look into the invisible world of lower class Seoul. Set in the grimy fringe suburbs of Seoul, A Quiet Dream is a glimpse into the everyday of misfits bound to a life determined…

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Sydney Film Festival Review: The Beguiled (USA, 2017) is a worthy remake with an excellent cast and crew

Apart from Lost in Translation and Marie Antoinette, I haven’t seen much of director Sofia Coppola‘s work. Known for her filmmaking approach to humanize her subjects with unorthodox methods like gentle pathos, looking through different character points-of-views outside the norm and the use of anachronisms, Coppola has achieved a reputation of being a director that is…

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Sydney Film Festival Review: The Young Karl Marx (France, 2017) is a safe bio-pic about the famous philosopher & socialist

The Young Karl Marx (Le jeune Karl Marx) is a bio-pic that feels authentic because it captures the period well in a visual sense. But you also get the feeling that it is only telling a part of the story and not least because it is all about Karl Marx’s youth. This dramatic film is…

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Sydney Film Festival Review: Phantom Boy (France, 2015) is oddly engaging and effortlessly weird

Whilst animation in film has evolved immensely over the last 20 years, there’s something immediately charming about Phantom Boy‘s deliberately flat and simple palleted aesthetic.  It may lack the emotional weight of the technically more refined Pixar offerings, but this film’s distinct look feels organically melded to its somber mentality. Coming courtesy of French directing…

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Sydney Film Festival Review: Final Portrait (UK/USA, 2017) can’t overcome its bland setting

Based on a memoir by American writer James Lord and adapted for the screen by actor Stanley Tucci, Final Portrait is a concise passion project with committed performances and evident production care that sadly doesn’t overcome its bland setting. Anchored by a wonderful turn from Geoffrey Rush as eccentric painter Giacometti, this dramedy of sorts…

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