As this year’s Sydney Film Festival program goes live (read all about it here), with 201 films from 70 countries on the bill, including 17 World Premieres, 6 international premieres and 137 Australian Premieres, bringing together hundreds of new international and local stories, festival director Nashen Moodley spoke with our Peter Gray about his vision, his hope for cinema in general, and what film sparked his passion to begin his cinematic journey.
Having seen this year’s line-up, I was fortunate to see a few of the titles out of Toronto last year and Sundance this year, so it’s awesome to see them playing at Sydney this year.
Oh, great. Fantastic. What were some of your favourites?
The Life of Chuck was so great. And The Things You Kill, that was such a nice surprise. I didn’t know what was going on with that one.
I love that one. You have to really hope the audience goes with it. If you don’t, you can really just lose it in seconds when it shifts. It’s like, “What the hell is going on here?”
Yeah, if I know people are going to see it, I just have to recommend not going to the bathroom at certain points, because if you miss something, you won’t be able to pick up the pieces I think.
Exactly. It’s so brilliant. So clever.
And looking at the films you choose, is there a balance in showcasing Australian films versus international selections? Is there a process in how many films can be shown from certain regions? Or it’s very much whatever works for the festival?
No, we absolutely do not have a quota system in terms of representation from various parts of the world. We want to show what’s great and the best of what’s happening in cinema all around the world, right? This year we’ll show films from more than 70 countries. That’s quite a big representation. Of course, we want to show Australian cinema in a prominent way, because we want to support our national cinema, and we want to provide a platform for our First Nation’s filmmakers, both the establishes and the upcoming. I think (the festival) works perfectly to see those Australian filmmakers alongside the best filmmakers of the world. We never go into it saying, “We must have this amount of films from this country.” We look at a lot of films, and we do think about geographic representation, but not by a strict number system of quantity.
Under your leadership, has there been a vision or mission statement that’s evolved since?
There’s a mission statement of the organisation. A vision for the organisation, which is constantly evolving. The vision is to be in touch with these changing times for our industry. In terms of the curatorial vision, I don’t think it’s altered very much. I think since arriving at the festival, my view was that it should be a festival for everyone. It should be a really accessible festival. There should be no barriers to people coming. I dislike the notion that there is a particular type of “festival film.” I think festivals should show great films and not worry too much about what the perception of where that film should belong.
I think we’ve continued in that way and tried to track what’s exciting in cinema, and what’s essential in that year of cinema. To try and bring in an ever expanding audience to see these films and to be with us and celebrate cinema. I think cinema around the world is going through a difficult time. COVID was a real blow. And in many places, cinema has not recovered to the extent of pre-COVID levels. So film festivals are actually doing very well in these times. The attendance is very strong. So festivals have to be this enticing place to celebrate cinema, where people can come and see films with hundreds or, in the case of the State Theatre, thousands of other people and experience that energy. We want people to do that during the festival, but we (also) want them to keep going through the year. We want cinema to be vibrant. That’s part of our vision. And I think to execute that mission, you’ve got to be open to all kinds of cinema. You’ve got to say you can find great cinema in all sorts of places, in 70 different countries around the world.
Have there been any particular moments or milestones under your tenure that you’re especially proud of when it comes to the Sydney Film Festival?
I think that it’s been an incredible time for me at the Sydney Film Festival. And the festival has gone through moments of incredible highs and then the COVID era of such great uncertainty, where many film festivals and art organisations around the world weren’t sure if they’d be able to (run) again. I think, for me, some of the things that I really loved being here for was the screening of Parasite with Bong Joon Ho here at the festival, just after he won the Palme d’Or in Cannes, before he won the Oscar. That was a really incredible moment, for the audience and for me, and for all of us who work at the festival. I think that was something quite incredible.
There are other things that I feel very proud of. I think we have put First Nation cinema and Australian Indigenous cinema as very much a centerpiece of the festival at every opportunity. I think we’ve focused on these great filmmakers from our country and beyond Australia as well. It’s so often the first opportunity for an audience member anywhere in the world to just rock up and buy a ticket and be able to see a film direct from, say, Canada. We have an incredible team at the festival who work very, very hard to bring it all together in what becomes a relatively short space of time.
Oh, the volunteers are so often the unsung heroes of these festivals.
I think it’s because the people who work at the festival, the people who volunteer, they all love cinema, right? They all love it and they’re doing it because they think cinema is important, they think the festival is important, and it’s also fun. I think that infectious enthusiasm for cinema means that people are really happy to make it all work and make an enormous contribution of time and energy to make the festival what it is.
And going off that love of cinema, what was it for you that sparked the passion? Was there a film that changed your perspective?
The earliest things I remember was watching my mother was watching. She loves cinema. So I watched westerns when I was a kid. I think the first film I really loved was The Jungle Book. I watched that incessantly. And then when I was older it was Enter the Dragon every day after school. I just watched everything I could, which was limited. I grew up in South Africa, where it was pretty limited to just mostly Hollywood stuff, some Indian cinema, some Hong Kong cinema, martial arts and kung fu cinema. That was kind of the limits of what you could see. I was in high school when I saw Takeshi Kitano’s film Sonatine, and that really changed my idea of what cinema could be. And that just set me off on this journey to discover what was happening in cinema from outside of what I knew. And I’m still doing that all these decades later.
For more information on the full program, session times, ticket availability, and information on the Special Events – including Trivia Nights, Letterboxd Meet-ups, Friday the 13th horror hour, and free industry chats – head to the official Sydney Film Festival site here.
