The Act of Killing
Denmark,
Norway, UK | In Indonesian with English subtitles
Directors: Joshua Oppenheimer, Christine Cynn and
Anonymous
After the Indonesian government was overthrown in 1965, Anwar
Congo, a
sharp-dressing small-time gangster,
abetted the military regime in the mass slaughter of alleged
communists. In this chillingly surreal film, movie-obsessed
Anwar and his collaborators re-enact their murderous past in the
style of the films
they love. Packing a visceral and visual
punch, this award-winning festival hit was feted by indie
superstars Errol Morris and Werner Herzog. Winner of the Audience
Award at the 2013 Berlinale.
Watch trailer
|
Blackfish
USA | In
English
Director: Gabriela Cowperthwaite
Blackfish, orca, killer whale: for
decades
these awesome beasts have been captured, transferred to sea parks
and trained to perform for our entertainment. In 2010, a five-tonne
male named Tilikum killed one of his trainers at Florida's
SeaWorld. This mesmerising
documentary follows his tragic story and that of his fellow
captives through
interviews with the frequently misled and
misinformed workers in this highly
profitable industry.
Watch trailer
|
Blancanieves
Spain, France |
No dialogue (with English intertitles)
Director: Pablo Berger | Cast: Maribel Verdú, Daniel
Giménez Cacho
In this unique and unforgettable tribute to European
silent films, the fairy tale of Snow White is transposed
with great effect into the world of bullfighting in 1920s Spain.
Beautifully shot in black and white and featuring fabulous flamenco
music, a very evil stepmother, and a band of bullfighting dwarves,
Blancanieves is a magical retelling of a classic
story.
Watch trailer
|
Comrade Kim Goes Flying
Belgium, UK,
North Korea | In Korean with English subtitles
Director: Kim Gwang-hun, Nicholas Bonner, Anja Daelemans |
Cast: Han Jong-sim, Pak Chung-guk, Ri Yong-ho
The first North Korean movie ever to
screen at SFF (and the first co-production with capitalist
countries in 30 years) is a fabulous romantic comedy about a female
coal miner who dreams of becoming a trapeze artist with the
Pyongyang Circus. Thoroughly mainstream and made without government
interference, the film features communist propaganda imperatives
and Western cravings for kitsch coalescing in perfect
triple-somersault harmony.
Watch trailer
|
Exposed
USA | In
English
Director: Beth B.
New York underground artist Beth B. continues her
focus on transgressive
topics with this outrageously entertaining exploration of the
city's radical burlesque performers. Artists in the spotlight
including Dirty Martini, Mat Fraser, Julie Atlas Muz, World Famous
*BOB*, Bunny Love, Bambi the Mermaid and Rose Wood embrace
vulgarity and camp, challenging notions of gender and body image as
they shed their glittering G-strings.
Watch trailer
|
Fallen City
China | In
Mandarin and Sichuan dialect with English subtitles
Director: Zhao Qi
An earthquake destroyed the city of Beichuan in
Sichuan's mountainous north in 2008, leaving thousands dead and
millions homeless. The Chinese government decided to rebuild a new,
improved city just down the road. As the spacious modern apartments
take shape, director Zhao Qi follows three families, quake
survivors who struggle with the day-to-day, as well as their
country's relentless pursuit of progress.
Watch trailer
|
A Few Hours of Spring
France | In French with English subtitles
Director: Stephane Brize | Cast: Vincent Lindon, Hélène
Vincent, Emmanuelle Seigner
Featuring superb performances by Vincent Lindon
(Welcome) and Hélène Vincent
(Life Is a Long Quiet River), this is a very powerful and
affecting drama about the difficulties of a mother-and-son
relationship. At the age of 48, Alain is compelled to
move in with his mother, Yvette. Unpleasant enough for both, the
forced cohabitation is then compounded by an unexpected
discovery.
Watch trailer
|
Frances Ha
USA | In
English
Director: Noah Baumbach | Cast: Greta Gerwig, Mickey
Summer, Adam Driver
Greta Gerwig
(Greenberg, To Rome With Love) stars in and co-wrote this
breezy
and charming modern fable by Noah
Baumbach (The Squid and the Whale, Kicking And
Screaming).
She plays Frances, a trainee in a dance company who has yet to
find a clear direction in her life. Exploring Frances' various
missteps, her friendships and her thwarted ambitions, Frances
Ha is as charming as it is funny.
Watch trailer
|
Frankenstein's Army
Netherlands, USA | In English
Director: Richard Raaphorst | Cast: Karel Roden, Joshua
Sasse, Robert Gwilym
This cleverly assembled mockumentary is a wonderfully gruesome
and comic entry in the long line of movies about crazed Nazi
scientists. A descendant of a certain Victor Frankenstein works to
create an unstoppable army stitched together from body parts of
dead soldiers and machinery - resulting in some of the most
imaginative and vicious man-monsters you're ever likely to see.
|
The Human Scale
Denmark | In
English
Director: Andreas Møl Dalsgaard
Danish architect Jan
Gehl is on a mission
to reclaim our public spaces, throwing out
car-driven urban design and building cities for humans. From
Copenhagen to NY, Melbourne and Christchurch, his vision is
impacting our cityscapes.
The director of this documentary, Andreas
Dalsgaard, and Gehl Architects partner David Sim will be in Sydney
for SFF and
for a keynote presentation at Vivid Live. Find out more here.
Watch trailer
|
The Look of Love
UK, USA | In English
Director: Michael Winterbottom | Cast:
Steve Coogan, Anna Friel, Tamsin Egerton, Imogen
Poots
Steve Coogan's passion project reunites him with
longtime collaborator Michael Winterbottom (The Trip, 24 Hour
Party People) for the true story of the 'King of Soho', Paul
Raymond, who made a
fortune ruling a huge nightclub, real-estate and porn empire.
Coogan delivers a remarkably complex performance, alongside Anna
Friel, Tamsin Egerton and Imogen Poots, in this story of
titillation, nihilism, heartbreak and tragedy.
Watch trailer
|
La Maison de la Radio
France, Japan |
In French with English subtitles
Director: Nicolas Philibert
Nicolas Philibert, the award-winning director of
To Be and to Have, has turned his affectionate yet acute
gaze on France's national broadcaster. This beautifully crafted
documentary, shot in Radio France's bagel-shaped home on the Seine,
follows a dawn-to-dusk schedule and is dotted with delightfully
quirky characters, including a playful news editor, a charmingly
dedicated producer and an archetypal archivist.
Watch trailer
|
Midnight's Children
Canada | In English, Hindi and Urdu with English
subtitles
Director: Deepa Mehta | Cast: Satya Bhabha, Shahana
Goswami, Rajat Kapoor
Salman Rushdie's acclaimed novel is
finally brought to the screen by Deepa Mehta (Fire,
Earth) and the result is a stunning epic spanning several
decades
of Indian history. Written and beautifully narrated by Rushdie
himself, Midnight's Children is the story of two children
born
at the moment of India's independence
and swapped at birth, following their lives through a tumultuous
era.
Watch trailer
|
Miss Nikki and the Tiger Girls
Australia | In
English and Burmese with English subtitles
Director: Juliet Lamont
Winner of SFF's FOXTEL
Australian Documentary Prize in 2010 with The Snowman,
director Juliet Lamont returns with the insightful and entertaining
story of Burma's first girl band. The five young
girls, led by their Australian mentor Miss Nikki, face all the
challenges of a music career, channelling girl power to break
with
age-old cultural traditions and face the massive changes sweeping
their homeland.
Watch trailer
|
Oh Boy
Germany | In
German with English subtitles
Director: Jan Ole Gerster | Cast: Tom Schilling,
Friederike Kempter, Marc Hosemann
German hit Oh Boy is part slacker comedy,
part chronicle of Berlin's transition to hipster cool. College
dropout Niko has been dumped by his girlfriend, is in trouble with
the law, has just been cut off by his father and can no longer buy
a cup of 'normal coffee'. Soon a series of chance encounters will
have a profound influence on his future.
Watch trailer
|
Outrage Beyond
Japan | In
Japanese with English subtitles
Director: Takeshi Kitano | Cast: Beat Takeshi, Toshiyuki
Nishida, Tomokazu Miura
The great Japanese director Takeshi
Kitano (Hana-bi, Kikujiro, Zatoichi) returns with a
thrilling and violent gangster film, in which an ambitious cop
ignites a power struggle between the two major yakuza families,
exploiting the growing chasm between organised crime's young
guns
and the old guard. Filled with intrigue, secret plots, dirty
tricks, and a great deal
of violent vengeance, Outrage Beyond is
a wild ride through the Japanese underworld.
Watch trailer
|
Prince Avalanche
USA | In English
Director: David Gordon Green | Cast: Paul Rudd, Emile
Hirsch
Paul Rudd and Emile Hirsch star in this absurd but
moving comedy about a mismatched pair, one straightlaced and
the other irresponsible, who spend a summer repainting traffic
lines down the centre of a country highway ravaged by wildfire.
Director David Gordon Green (George Washington, Pineapple
Express) has crafted a tender and humorous film about an
unlikely friendship. Winner of the Silver Bear
for Best Director at the 2013 Berlinale.
|
Rear Window
USA | In
English | 1954
Director: Alfred Hitchcock | Cast: James Stewart, Grace
Kelly, Raymond Burr
Catch Jeff Desom's intensely cool timelapse video
installation, a dissection of Alfred Hitchcock's 1954 classic, at
the Festival Hub, then watch the original on the big screen. James
Stewart stars as a voyeuristic invalid and Grace Kelly as his
dutiful blonde girlfriend in a thriller considered by many to be
the maestro's best. "Watching it, you feel titillated, horrified,
and, ultimately, purged." - New Yorker.
Find out more about Jeff Desom's timelapse video
installation, Rear Window Loop, playing at the Festival Hub,
here.
|
Red Obsession
Australia | In English
Directors: David Roach and Warwick Ross
Too valuable to drink? The vintage wines
of France's Bordeaux region are now a global commodity, attracting
voracious interest from China's new wealthy elite.
This fascinating new Australian documentary, narrated by Russell
Crowe, explores our changing international economy and Shanghai's
obsession with these illustrious vineyards.
Following the movie, enjoy a Gourmet Cinema experience at the
Hilton's Glass Brasserie, headed by award-winning restaurateur Luke
Mangan, and inspired by the film and the region.
Watch trailer
BUY TICKETS
|
Scatter My Ashes at Bergdorf's
USA | In English
Director: Matthew Miele
Manhattan's Bergdorf Goodman is frequently described
as the epitome of luxury, a posh palace, an emporium attracting the
most discerning clientele in the world. Giorgio Armani, Karl
Lagerfeld, Marc Jacobs, Joan Rivers and the Olsen sisters are just
some of the designers and celebrities who contribute stories to
this department-store 'biopic' - not to mention the top-notch
staff, including an unnerving personal shopper.
MasterCard holders are able to experience the
60th Sydney Film Festival first with an exclusive private screening
of this film, in the beautiful setting of the magnificent
State Theatre. Purchase tickets to this exclusive Priceless Sydney
event below.
BUY TICKETS HERE or call 1300 733
733
|
Stoker
UK, USA | In English
Director: Park Chan-wook | Cast: Mia Wasikowska, Matthew
Goode, Nicole Kidman, Jacki Weaver
For his first English-language film, Korean master
Park Chan-wook (Old Boy, Joint Security Area) has made a
haunting neo-Gothic thriller filled with unforgettable images. When
India Stoker (Jane Eyre's Mia Wasikowska) loses her father
in a car accident, her idyllic life is shattered. After long-lost
uncle Charlie (Matthew Goode) arrives and moves in with India and
her unstable mother Evie (Nicole Kidman), things begin to spiral
violently out of control.
|
Stories We Tell
Canada | In English
Director: Sarah Polley
This unusually intimate yet universal real-life story
from actor-director Sarah Polley (Away from Her, Take This
Waltz) takes as its subject her extended family, including her
actor mother and playwright father. As she journeys through her
family's secrets - skilfully mixing past and present, the real and
the imagined - Polley exposes the complex ways in which each
family
member shapes their own narrative.
Watch trailer
|
Wadjda
Saudi Arabia, Germany | In Arabic with English
subtitles
Director: Haifaa Al Mansour | Cast: Reem Abdullah, Waad
Mohammed, Abdullrahman Al Gohani
The first feature film shot entirely in the Kingdom
of Saudi Arabia, where cinemas are not permitted, and by that
country's first woman filmmaker, Haifaa Al Mansour, Wadjda
is about a 10-year-old girl who wants nothing more than to own a
bicycle. In her conservative society, Wadjda has little chance of
attaining her dream, but
she soon comes up with a scheme to do just that. Winner of the
Best Arab Feature Film at the Dubai International Film
Festival 2012.
Watch
trailer
|
What Maisie Knew
USA | In
English
Directors: Scott McGehee and David Siegel | Cast:
Julianne Moore, Alexander Skarsgård, Onata
April
Julianne Moore, Alexander Skarsgård and Steve Coogan
star in a darkly comic and emotionally compelling film about a
six-year-old girl living through a bitter divorce between her
rock-icon mother and distracted father. As Maisie is shuttled back
and forth between them, she comes to rely more and more on her
parents' new partners, who are themselves falling in love.
Watch trailer
|
What Richard Did
Ireland | In English
Director: Lenny Abrahamson | Cast: Jack Reynor, Róisín
Murphy, Sam Keeley
From director Lenny Abrahamson
(Garage), What Richard Did follows
Richard Karlsen, a golden-boy athlete and the undisputed alpha
male of a privileged set of South Dublin teenagers, through the
summer between the end of school and
the beginning of university. Then one
night Richard does something that shatters the lives of the people
closest to him.
Watch trailer
|
William Yang: My Generation
Australia | In English
Director: Martin Fox
In the '70s and '80s, photographer William Yang captured
Sydney's emerging artistic, literary, theatrical and queer circles,
as
well as his friendships with artists, writers and fashion
designers such as Brett Whiteley, Patrick White, Linda
Jackson
and Jenny Kee. With myriad images and
his trademark candid narration, Yang leads us through this
beguilingly decadent and creative era.
The SFF, in partnership with ABC TV Arts, will present William
Yang: My Generation
at 7pm on Saturday 8 June at Dendy Opera Quays cinemas,
followed by William Yang: In Conversation at the Museum of
Contemporary Art, hosted by Vivid LIVE, at 10:30pm on Sunday 16
June on ABC1's Sunday Arts Up Late.
Watch trailer
BUY TICKETS
|
Wrong Side of the Road
Australia | In
English | 1981
Director: Ned Lander | Cast: Ronnie Ansell, Peter Butler,
Les Graham
It's a welcome return to the big screen for an iconic
Australian feature - we're pleased to present the National Film and
Sound Archive's restoration of Wrong Side of the Road. A
heady mix of fact and fiction, the film follows two Aboriginal
bands, Us Mob, and No Fixed Address, as they travel from one South
Australian gig to another. This game-changing 1980s production
still packs a punch, and is as relevant now as the year it was
made.
Watch excerpt
|