The 69th Sydney Film Festival today announced a sneak peek of 22 new films to be featured in this year’s 8 – 19 June 2022 event. The announcement is in advance of the full program launch on Wednesday 11 May.
The 22 films revealed today take us on a kaleidoscopic odyssey of the human experience. Travel across space and time with features about lovers bonding in virtual reality through the COVID-19 lockdowns, to rich Westerners behaving badly in the High Atlas mountains of Morocco, to a single mother liberated from her husband in 1980s Paris. And land back in Australia for tales of a millennial’s Instagram-obsessed hen’s weekend that goes very badly.
From an insightful documentary uncovering the struggles of the Indigenous Uru-eu-wau-wau people to protect their Amazonian homeland to a real-life narrative following female street dancers training for Australia’s biggest dance competition, these films are indicative of the incredible local and international titles in this year’s program.
Hannah Barlow and Kane Senes show audiences that revenge is a dish best shared on Instagram with Sissy. A SXSW success, this clever Australian horror sees an influencer played by Aisha Dee (The Bold Type) encounters her childhood tormentor on a hen’s weekend.
The inimitable John Michael McDonagh’s black comic drama The Forgiven features global stars Jessica Chastain and Ralph Fiennedepicting the entitlement of Westerners juxtaposed with the lives of ordinary Moroccans in a merciless neo-colonial society.
Luke Cornish’s Sydney documentary Keep Stepping is about two remarkable female performers training for Australia’s biggest street dance competition, Destructive Steps: a tale of love, obsession and the transformative power of performance.
Audience Award and Special Jury Award (World Cinema Documentary) winner at Sundance 2022, The Territory, is Alex Pritz’s debut about the struggle of the Indigenous Uru-eu-wau-wau people of Brazil as they are forced to protect their motherland from underpaid and ambitious farmers. Direct from the World Cinema Documentary Competition at Sundance 2022 is Joe Hunting’s We Met in Virtual Reality, where love, fantasy and technology coalesce in this ground-breaking documentary filmed entirely inside the world of VRChat during the pandemic.
Macario De Souza’s (Bra Boys) film 6 Festivals doubles as an emotional tale of friendship and a celebration of Australia’s iconic festival scene, with cameos by several notable local music acts including Bliss n Eso and Peking Duk, as a young group of friends, attempt to attend as many music festivals as possible in the wake of their friend’s serious diagnosis.
Asa Butterfield (Sex Education, X + Y – SFF 2015) and Gwendolyn Christie (Game of Thrones, In Fabric – SFF 2019) starring Flux Gourmet, a deliciously deadpan comedy by British outré cinema master Peter Strickland (In Fabric – SFF 2019), for an outrageous film depicting the residency of a ‘culinary collective’ that turns cooking sounds and supermarket shopping into performance art.
French filmmaker Mikhaël Hers’ (Amanda) slice-of-life drama set in 1980s Paris, The Passengers of the Night, casts Charlotte Gainsbourg (Sundown, The Tree – SFF 2010, Antichrist) as a single mother rediscovering herself after being left by her husband.
Please Baby Please is a genderqueer musical starring Andrea Riseborough (Shepherds and Butchers – SFF 2016) and Demi Moore (Songbird) as a 1950s Manhattan couple unlocking a sexual awakening within themselves after witnessing a violent incident.
The Full Sydney Film Festival 2022 programme will be announced on May 11th.