Sydney Film Festival

It is only in 1970s Canada where an over-abundance of hippies, draft-dodgers, Buddhists, vegans, nudists, musicians, writers and tree-huggers could meet and create an organisation like Greenpeace. The documentary, How To Change The World looks at the origins of this grassroots, activist movement and shows how it became the enduring institution it is today. The…

The Price of Fame (La rançon de la gloire) has an interesting-enough hook. It is based on some true events that occurred in the seventies when two desperate crooks decided to steal the body of the legendary, Charlie Chaplin and hold it to ransom. The film is ultimately a letdown that is plagued by problems…

The final weekend of the Sydney Film Festival was jam packed with major events around the city. Here are some photos from the premieres of the iPhone film Tangerine, the new documentary Brand: A Second Coming – both who had the filmmakers in attendance – as well as the nominees at the Dendy Awards for Australian Short Films….

In the mid-90’s, Timothy Conigrave published his bestselling memoir, titled Holding the Man, 10 days before his death. It was a story so intimate and full of warmth that it continued to resonate with Australian audiences over the years. Tommy Murphy adapated it into an award-winning stage production in 2006, and now Director Neil Armfield…

Track the movements of several gastronomy-addicted bloggers while they travel around the world and eat at some of the absolute top restaurants, most guided by the holy foodie grail that is the Michelin Star rating system. It seems like a terrible idea when you think about it – food bloggers are notoriously uninteresting – but…

Most of the crew involved in We Are Still Here are veterans to the horror genre, and their collective talents come together beautifully in this half satire, half serious story. Director Ted Geoghegan pays homage to the vintage and slightly cheesy, always stringing a thread of self-awareness through the film while it unfolds with a…

From prolific Oscar Winning documentary filmmaker Alex Gibney (Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room, Freakonomics and dozens of others) comes the much talked about new film Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief, one of three films Gibney has showcased at this year’s Sydney Film Festival (the others were Steve Jobs: The Man…

Last night marked the end of yet another successful Sydney Film Festival as the traditional Closing Night Gala saw SFF awards announced and the world premiere of Neil Armfield’s anticipated film adaptation of Holding the Man. Before the screening, which was met with a rapturous, emotional applause, a one-hour awards ceremony was conducted in Sydney’s…

East England county Norfolk is a drab, scrappy location for Guy Myhill’s The Goob and it’s got just the atmosphere necessary to tell a tale of one family’s disquieting struggle with abuse and oppression that runs alongside the portrayal of a young boy’s – the family’s youngest – need for identity and a stable role…

In an exclusive interview which took place last week during the Sydney Film Festival, I got to sit down with acclaimed filmmaker Ramin Bahrani – a man who critic Roger Ebert hailed as “the director of the decade” before his passing (in turn, 99 Homes was dedicated to Ebert) – to talk about his new film 99 Homes,…

New in films that unexpectedly leave you completely satisfied and slightly breathless: Victoria, a two-hour, one-shot, action-drama from Director Sebastian Schipper. It’s a film that takes you all over the late-night streets of Berlin as the sun slowly creeps up and the fallout from a chance encounter continues to get more and more intense until…

If director and cinematographer, Thomas Burstyn (This Way of Life) appeared on Who Do You Think You Are? It would be one fascinating episode. His family tree boasts a poet-turned-businessman father, an explorer brother and a mother who became a fashion designer after fleeing the Nazis. In Some Kind of Love Burstyn describes all of…

Note: This article contains major spoilers about the film.  Earlier this week, we reviewed Nasty Baby, the new film from Writer/Director Sebastián Silva, which is divisive in its very intent. Following yesterday’s screening, one of the stars of the film Tunde Adebimpe – in town with his band TV on the Radio to play the Sydney…

Cartel Land is the documentary that award-winning filmmaker Matthew Heineman risked his life for, and the danger he thrust himself into is communicated shockingly well in this 98 minute look at cartels and vigilante militias both north and south of the U.S./Mexico border. Heineman has a blockbuster flair for this work, which is why it’s…

When veteran, Iranian filmmaker, Jafar Panahi was jailed in 2010 and banned from making films this made him even more determined to carry on doing just that. In this time he has made not one but three movies, the most recent being Tehran Taxi. This one sees fiction dressed up as a documentary and it…

By Popular Demand, Sydney Film Festival (SFF) are thrilled to release a third round of screenings at Palace Cinemas for 10 films fast approaching second screening capacity. Eight features and two documentaries make up the selection at the Palace Verona and Norton Street cinemas. This extended partnership beyond the end of the festival is a…

The Sydney Film Festival (SFF) is ecstatic to announce that Cemetery of Splendour, directed by Apichatpong Weerasethakul, will now be screening at the festival following a rapturous reception at Cannes this year. Film aficionados will recognise Weerasethakul as the director of Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives, which won the Palme d’Or at…

The world of music biopic is always a tricky affair. Trying to balance enough rock and roll fantasy and/or exaggeration with reality to create an engaging but honest story about an iconic musician can often serve itself up as a disappointment (De-Lovely and Beyond the Sea are two that immediately come to mind). Focusing on…

I’ve often been intrigued by the idea of what would happen if you flip a movie on its head. Market it as one thing and then turn it into something completely different. Something that surprises. Something that gets people talking. Imagine, for instance, if Hostel (2005) had been marketed as a raunchy teen comedy? The idea…

Jennifer Peedom’s Sherpa is worthy of praise for maintaining it’s focus when it could have easily been lost in the majestic and overwhelming beauty of Mount Everest. The team behind this documentary explore the increasingly strained relationship between the international climbing community and the Sherpas who make such climbs possible, effectively capturing the anxiety that…

Get on Up was the entrée, a biopic on the inimitable, James Brown. But Oscar-winner, Alex Gibney’s documentary, Mr. Dynamite: The Rise of James Brown is the more substantial, main course. For over two hours the audience is treated to a film that is full of music and flamboyance, from old performances on stage and…

The names Kit Lambert and Chris Stamp may not mean much to you unless you know that they were the unlikely managers of The Who during the sixties and early seventies. The pair are a rather odd couple and they’re also the subject of a documentary by James D. Cooper. The result is a vibrant…

Those classed as ‘Hood Films’ really made an impact on commercial cinema back in the 90’s. Classics like Boyz n the Hood, Menace II Society, and Juice were met with critical acclaim and appealed to both a crowd that likes intelligent, well-written cinema rife with thoughtful social commentary, and a crowd that just wants an…

Mysteries and detective stories have long been popular in literature, arts, films, with the story of Sherlock Holmes long enduring time and remake after reboot after re-imagining. In Mr Holmes we take a look at the world’s greatest detective in his twilight years long since retired but still troubled by one unsolved case. Sherlock Holmes…

Gabriel Ripstein’s 600 Miles is a straight shooter unconcerned with excess narrative baggage, clocking in at 85 minutes with a minimal gun trafficking plot that relies on talented actors and raw cinematography to place this project as a worthy debut feature for the Mexican filmmaker. Veteran Tim Roth brings a solid performance to the film,…

Before the National Lampoon lent their name to some terrible straight-to-video films they were ground-breaking. This comedy institution started as a spin-off magazine; graduated to books, radio and stage revues; and eventually yielded cult comedy films worthy of inclusion in Hollywood. Drunk Stoned Brilliant Dead: The Story of the National Lampoon is a funny and…

“There will be no subtitles, dialogue, or voiceover” is our introduction to The Tribe, a surprisingly shocking film about a state boarding deaf-school in Kiev, with it’s own seedy underbelly of crime and Lord of the Flies type brutality. Director Miroslav Slaboshpitsky delves into the miserable and calmly observes the bleak, dog-eat-dog world that is…

  The gifted Thomas Salvador directs and stars in Vincent (2014), a French film that tells the story of a man named Vincent who develops extraordinary superpowers when he comes in contact with water. With his recently discovered ability, Vincent spends much of his time in the water, taking in the awe and wonder that comes with developing…

Kim Farrant’s Strangerland has a magical and mythical quality to it, making full use of the Australian outback with rich, rocky-red landscape shots that swallow the film’s characters in expansive, ambitious cinematography. But while visually impressive, Strangerland’s flaws lie in a commitment to ambiguity, presenting itself as one thing and then veering off into another…

Being an adult is hard. Relationships are hard. Making new friends is hard. Exercising and eating right is hard. Having big dreams is hard. But what we really want is the result. The thing at the end of all that hard work that makes it worthwhile. Sometimes getting to that point can be a little…