The 69th Sydney Film Festival program was officially launched today by Sydney Film Festival Director Nashen Moodley with a bumper chop of over 200 films on offer at this year’s festival.
The 2022 Festival opens with the World Premiere of We Are Still Here, a multi-genre First Nations collaboration interweaving eight stories by 10 directors from Australia, Aotearoa New Zealand and the South Pacific.
We Are Still Here is told through the eyes of eight heroic protagonists, traversing over 1000 years, showing the strength of love and hope required to overcome shared traumas that Indigenous people from these regions continue to face.
The official competition will see 12 competing films are two Australian debut features: Archibald Prize-winning artist Del Kathryn Barton’s feature directorial debut Blaze is a rousing ode to female courage, starring Julia Savage, Simon Baker and Yael Stone; and Goran Stolevski’s visually spectacular supernatural tale You Won’t Be Alone starring BAFTA-nominee Noomi Rapace alongside Alice Englert and Carloto Cotta.
Direct from the prestigious Un Certain Regard competition at the 2022 Cannes Film Festival will be: Davy Chou’s All The People I’ll Never Be, the story of a French women’s quest to discover her Korean roots; Burning Days, a riveting political thriller by Turkish filmmaker Emin Alper; and Hlynur Pálmason’s Godland, which tells of a Danish priest’s perilous journey into the wilds of Iceland.
Also screening straight from the Cannes Competition is Close, Belgian filmmaker Lukas Dhont’s (Girl, SFF 2018) stunningly beautiful examination of an intense teen friendship torn asunder.
Berlinale 2022 gems include Golden Bear winner Alcarràs, Carla Simón’s beautifully observed story about the land and livelihood of a farming family in Catalonia; alongside Kamila Andini’s beguiling period drama Before, Now and Then, set against the backdrop of tumultuous political times in Indonesia; and The Quiet Girl, the first Irish language feature to compete in Berlin.
Utama (winner of the World Cinema Grand Jury Prize: Dramatic, at Sundance 2022) is an astonishing love story about an elderly couple in the Bolivian Highlands fighting to preserve their way of life. Also in Competition are Sara Dosa’s Fire of Love, the incredible story of vulcanologists Katia and Maurice Kraft, and Lorenzo Vigas’ The Box, the tense drama of a Mexican teen’s search for his long lost father.
World premieres at the Festival include several Australian documentaries: award winning filmmaker Penny McDonald’s intimate documentary Audrey Napanangka, about a Warlpiri woman and her Sicilian partner, filmed over 10 years in Mparntwe (Alice Springs); Jason van Genderen’s documentary Everybody’s Oma, which follows his NSW Central Coast family as they manage the failing health of their family’s matriarch, known to Aussies after going viral on social media; Keep Stepping, Luke Cornish’s documentary about two remarkable female performers training for Australia’s biggest street dance competition, and General Hercules, Brodie Poole’s portrait of a Kalgoorlie-Boulder man, a town and a country sent mad by the timeless cycles of exploitation, racism and greed.
Australian features having their world premiere at the Festival include: 6 Festivals, Macario De Souza’s (Bra Boys) emotional tale of friendship and a celebration of Australia’s iconic festival scene; Evicted! A Modern Romance, an irreverent Aussie comedy about four spuriously employed housemates on the verge of eviction as they trawl Sydney’s fraught rental market; and The Longest Weekend, a true indie from Sydney’s Inner West in which three siblings reunite, feud and reunite again, featuring an ensemble cast including screen veterans Tammy MacIntosh and John Batchelor (Red Dog).
Two series debuting in the Festival include all six episodes of prequel series Mystery Road: Origin, depicting the brutal reality of a young police officer in 1999 in a small town, with an impressive cast including Mark Coles Smith and Steve Bisley and directed by Dylan River (Buckskin, 2013); and True Colours, shot in the spectacular country around Mparntwe (Alice Springs) and Yeperenye (East Macdonnell Ranges), starring Rarriwuy Hick (Redfern Now), Mirando Otto and Trisha Morton-Thomas.
International tales making their world premiere include hilarious Kiwi comedy Nude Tuesday, spoken entirely in gibberish, separately subtitled in English by comedian Julia Davis and telling the story of a bored couple trying to save their marriage at a New Age retreat; and Indian magical realist drama Fairy Folk, in which a genderless woodland creature crashes into the lives of a jaded couple.
Many of the World Premiere films will have guests attending to introduce their screenings, including Jackie van Beek and the filmmaking teams behind We Are Still Here, Mystery Road: Origin and True Colours.
Australian stories screened here include: SXSW 2022 hit Seriously Red an Australian comedy following a vivacious, misguided redhead trading her 9-5 to become a Dolly Parton impersonator from Gracie Otto, starring Krew Boylan, Rose Byrne and Bobby Cannavale; and Lonesome, Craig Boreham’s moving queer tale of desire, sexuality and isolation.
Global stars will light up the theatre’s silver screen including Jessica Chastain and Ralph Fiennes in The Forgiven, a black comic study of clashing cultures, by the inimitable John Michael McDonagh; and Sundance rom-com favourite Cha Cha Real Smooth starring Dakota Johnson and the film’s writer-director Cooper Raiff.
Sophie Hyde’s sparkling comedy Good Luck To You, Leo Grande, starring Emma Thompson as an older women who hires a sex worker; Joel Kim Booster and Bowen Yang (SNL) star in hilarious queer comedy Fire Island, about a group of best friends on a debauched summer holiday; and The Phantom of the Open stars Oscar-winner Mark Rylance and Sally Hawkins in the laugh-out-loud true story of the worst golfer to ever play the British Open.
Direct from Cannes is One Fine Morning, starring Léa Seydoux as a single mother trying to balance the emotional needs of her parents (the latest from writer/director Mia Hansen-Løve; and Tchaïkovsky’s Wife, Kirill Serebrennikov’s historical drama focusing on an obsessive, one-sided love affair between the revered composer and his devoted wife.
Also coming straight off the international film festival circuit are Navalny, winner of the Audience Award, Sundance 2022, a revealing and suspenseful documentary filmed in secret on Alexei Navalny, the Russian opposition leader poisoned with nerve agent; and from the Berlinale 2022 Competition, comes The Passengers of the Night, a warm family drama set in 1980s Paris starring Charlotte Gainsbourg.
Special Presentations also include Huda’s Salon from two-time international Oscar nominee Hany Abu-Assad; the animated feature Where is Anne Frank?, Ari Folman’s vivid, visionary retelling of the Anne Frank story; and Armarğan Ballantyne’s hilarious Nude Tuesday.
Festival guests include: Seriously Red’s director Gracie Otto and cast member/screenwriter Krew Boylan; Lonesome’s writer-director Craig Boreham and Nude Tuesday’s director Armarğan Ballantyne and screenwriter Jackie van Beek.
Nine documentaries (including five World Premieres) will contest the 2022 Documentary Australia Award.
World Premieres: Keep Stepping, Luke Cornish’s documentary about two female street dancers in Sydney; Jason van Genderen’s heartfelt Everybody’s Oma; Audrey Napanangka, Penelope McDonald’s study of a Warlpiri woman and her Sicilian partner; a David and Goliath political battle set in a Western Australian mining town, General Hercules and; Polenta, the culmination of three months of experimentation by Adrian Di Salle, during which five cameras were set up around the director’s family table to record every dinner served.
Also in the running: Maya Newell’s film The Dreamlife of Georgie Stone spans 19 years and reveals the memories of an Australian transgender teen as she helps change laws, affirm her gender and find her voice; Australian director Karl Malakunas’ documentary Delikado set on the island of Palawan, home to one of the world’s most diverse rainforests in the Philippines and under threat from illegal logging; The Sweetness, a portrait of Bonnie, a widow living off-the-grid in her Queensland home in the wake of Cycle Yasi; and Warrawong… the windy place on the hill which follows an elderly couple determined to stay on their remote property New South Wales.
From award-winning hits across the international festival circuit, to exciting new works by emerging filmmaking talent, the Festival will present captivating stories showcasing great cinematic storytellers from both Australia and around the world.
Australian story The Plains is David Easteal’s portrait of a middle-aged lawyer driving back to his Melbourne home from work over the course of a year which appeared in competition in Rotterdam 2022.
From our neighbours in New Zealand comes a darkly-comic caper and SXSW favourite Millie Lies Low, exploring the ways impostor syndrome can distort decision making, starring Ana Scotney.
Exciting features with big names include: Tony-award winning Stephen Karam’s film The Humans, which strikes an uncanny balance between family dramedy, and subtle psychological horror, featuring Richard Jenkins, Amy Schumer and Steven Yuen; the Aubrey Plaza-led heist film Emily the Criminal, following the star as she becomes entangled in the criminal underworld of Los Angeles; Alice, a riveting thriller about an enslaved woman who escapes from a Georgia plantation – only to discover that it’s actually 1973, starring Keke Palmer (Hustlers), Johnny Lee Miller and Common; and Andrea Riseborough leads the leather-clad, gender-bending Please Baby Please, a treatise on lust, marriage, and camp, which opened Rotterdam 2022.
Oscar-winning director Graham Moore’s crime-thriller The Outfit stars Mark Rylance as a British suit maker caught up in the post-WWII Chicago mob wars. Stefan (The Counterfeiters) Ruzowitzky’s visually stunning thriller Hinterland sees a returned POW track a serial killer in the underbelly of post-WWI Vienna. In Palestine’s international Oscar entry The Stranger, filmmaker Adnan Fakher Eldin focuses on a Syrian med-school dropout who finds a new purpose when he decides to help a wounded civil war fighter.
Stories of love direct from the 2022 Berlinale include A E I O U – A Quick Alphabet Of Love by German filmmaker Nicolette Brebitz about an aging actor Anna (Sophie Rois, 3, SFF 2011), who is mugged by a young man who serendipitously becomes her new acting pupil; Max Walker-Silverman’s achingly beautiful drama A Long Song, centred on a widow waiting for her old flame to visit her lakeside campsite in Colorado; and Li Ruijun’s rural Chinese love story Return to Dust, told against the backdrop of China’s rapidly changing social landscape.
Also screening from the Berlinale are Peter Strickland’s Flux Gourmet, an outrageous tale of food, music and arts funding, starring Gwendoline Christie (Games of Thrones) and Asa Butterfield (Sex Education); cult favourite Quentin Dupieux’s wickedly funny and absurd time-travel romp Incredible But True; One Year, One Night, featuring bright French stars Noémie Merlant (Portrait of a Lady on Fire, SFF 2019; Paris, 13th District, SFF 2021) and Nahuel Pérez Biscayart (BPM) as a couple coming to terms with surviving a terror attack; and Ulrich Seidl’s darkly comic drama Rimini, about a washed up pop star.
From Sundance comes the 2022 Winner of the World Cinema Dramatic Competition for directing, Klondike, Maryna Er Gorbach’s urgent film that tracks the lives of a dysfunctional couple in 2014 Ukraine; and Gentle, in which real-life competitive bodybuilder Eszter Csonka stars as an athlete and sex worker willing to sacrifice everything for perfection and success.
Winner of the Cannes Jury Prize is Ahed’s Knee, Nadav Lapid’s provocative follow up to Synonyms has an Israeli filmmaker railing against threats to artistic freedom in his country; and from Un Certain Regard is Commitment Hasan by Semih Kaplanoğlu about a farmer in Turkey who sets about clearing his slate before he and his wife take their pilgrimage to Mecca.
Films touching on social issues include The Blind Man Who Did Not Want To See Titanic, Finnish director Teemu Nikki’s bold and sensitive portrait of a man with disability who seeks out his long-distance lover by making a risky train journey; Father’s Day which explores Rwanda’s patriarchy, feminism and history of violence; and Private Desert, winner of the Audience Award at Venice, which explores masculinity and loneliness in the story of a burned out Brazilian cop.
Tales from an Asian perspective include tantalising South Korean mystery Hommage, starring Lee Jeong-eun (Parasite, SFF 2019); Inu-Oh, a Japanese folklore-glam-rock-musical anime; and No Land’s Man, about a South Asian man fleeing persecution from his homeland whose life changes after meeting an Australian woman in New York, directed by Bangladeshi filmmaker Mostafa Sarwar Farooki.
Yuni, which won Toronto’s Platform Award, is Kamila Andini’s (The Seen and Unseen, SFF 2018) exploration of a teenage girl’s ambition in an austere Indonesian community; and Thai filmmaker Jakrawal Nilthamrong’s Anatomy of Time serves a touching story that is also a powerful metaphor for the political and social upheavals that have affected life in Thailand.
Seasoned and emerging European auteurs in the program include: renowned Dutch filmmaker Alex van Warmardam’s sinister mystery NR. 10, in which theatre actors are covertly watched by shadowy Catholic Church figures; French writer-director Ivan Calbérac’s The Tasting, a charming rom-com about love, desire and wine; Emre Kayiş’ Toronto FIPRESCI winning debut Anatolian Leopard, a quirky drama depicting a lonely zoo director who conceals the death of his prize exhibit; and Unrest, Cyril Schäublin’s delicately comic portrait of a watchmaking town caught between industry and political anarchy in 1870s Switzerland.