This year’s Sydney film festival program has just been announced and, as usual, it is bulging with treats from around the world. The event kicks off on 5 June with a screening of Paul Clarke’s documentary Midnight Oil: The Hardest Line, and runs until 16 June at various venues across the city.
Here are 10 films you might want to check out – in addition to three others on the program that I’ve written about previously: The Moogai, Every Little Thing and Mozart’s Sister.
Kinds of Kindness
Director: Yorgos Lanthimos
Country: Ireland/UK/US
Many of us are still drunk from the fumes of Yorgos Lanthimos’ intoxicatingly strange Poor Things. Not much is known about his latest collaboration with Emma Stone: a triptych described by the director as “a contemporary film” with “four or five actors who play one part in each story, so they all play three different parts”. Stone’s co-stars include the reportedly highly slappable Willem Dafoe.
Sasquatch Sunset
Directors: Nathan Zellner and David Zellner
Country: US
Despite old mate Bigfoot being rather camera shy, we get to watch not one but four sasquatch up close and personal in this zany comedy from David and Nathan Zellner. The film is set in the California wilderness and follows a year in the life of a very hairy family, played by a prosthetics-lathered cast including Riley Keough and Jesse Eisenberg. Peter Bradshaw described it as a “brilliant and radical” production comparable, in non-verbal cinema, to Planet of the Apes, Watership Down and early silent films. Sold!
Crossing
Director: Levan Akin
Country: Sweden/Denmark/France/Turkey/Georgia
Among cinema’s greatest pleasures is the absorption of other cultures and different aspects of human experience. In Crossing, the writer-director Levan Akin focuses on Istanbul’s trans community in a story that follows Mzia Arabuli’s Lia, a former high school teacher searching for her missing trans niece. Fionnuala Halligan from ScreenDaily described it as “an elegy of travel and trans life” that’s “dream-like even as it cruises through a purposefully shaped narrative”.
Otto by Otto
Director: Gracie Otto
Country: Australia
Otto by Otto is the perfect title for this portrait of the great Australian actor Barry Otto, given that it was directed by his daughter Gracie, whose oeuvre includes Bump, Deadloch, The Artful Dodger and Heartbreak High. The film reflects on Otto senior’s long and wonderful career. Among my favourite Otto characters is his crumpled adman Harry Joy in the extraordinarily strange and surreal Bliss.
The Outrun
Director: Nora Fingscheidt
Country: UK/Germany
The latest performance from the excellent Saoirse Ronan has been described by the Guardian’s Adrian Horton as “an incredibly effective portrait of a reeling mind” that’s “titanic and quiet, and utterly convincing even in the very difficult art of acting drunk”. The four-time Oscar nominee plays Rona, a 29-year-old who returns home to the Orkney islands while battling the throes of addiction.
The Cars That Ate Paris
Director: Peter Weir
Country: Australia
The great Australian auteur Peter Weir has confirmed what many of us suspected: he’s retired from film-making. Weir’s stunning body of work can of course be revisited, including his first feature The Cars That Ate Paris – one of the pioneering productions in the genre of bat-shit-crazy Aussie car movies. It’s set in a small town that economically relies on a steady supply of wrecked vehicles, created by locals who force visitors off the road.
Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat
Director: John Grimonprez
Country: Belgium/France/Netherlands
Was the legendary trumpeter Louis Armstrong’s visit to the Congo in 1960 engineered by the US to distract the population from clandestine political machinations? The Belgian film-maker John Grimonprez unpacks a twisty stranger-than-fiction story integrating US imperialism, African politics and great music. His long (150 minutes) and ambitious documentary won Sundance’s world cinema documentary special jury award for cinematic innovation.
We Were Dangerous
Director: Josephine Stewart-Te Whiu
Country: New Zealand
This year Sydney film festival launches its First Nations award, which is reportedly the world’s largest cash prize for Indigenous film-making. Our friends from across the Tasman have a few films in competition, including Josephine Stewart-Te Whiu’s 1950s period piece about two Māori teenagers (Erana James and Manaia Hall) who are caught escaping an institution for delinquents and sent to a remote island complex run by a domineering matron (Rima Te Wiata). The film was executive-produced by Taika Waititi and co-stars Nathalie Morris from Bump.
I Saw the TV Glow
Director: Jane Schoenbrun
Country: US
The trans film-maker Jane Schoenbrun’s queer horror-thriller has been generating some great reviews, described by this masthead as “a buzzy, brilliant new film” about two teenagers addicted to a Buffy-like TV show. The plot reportedly involves strange occurrences that evoke questions around the nature of this show and how it connects with the two leads. In another Guardian article Veronica Esposito described the film as “very much about what it’s like to be queer before you’re even in the closet”.
Explanation for Everything
Director: Gábor Reisz
Country: Hungary/Slovakia
Political polarisation and the culture wars are key themes in this social satire centred around a Hungarian high school student who unwittingly instigates a national scandal when he forgets he’s wearing a jacket pin that has become a symbol of rightwing nationalism. Turning heads at last year’s Venice international film festival, Explanation for Everything takes issues specific to Hungary to make broader comments about the left-right divide and political divisiveness. Reisz will be a guest of the festival.
Sydney film festival 2024 runs 5-16 June
