Sporting the inspirational motto of “change your view, change your world” for its theme, the 2016 Sydney Film Festival is offering up an amazingly diverse program of films.
With everything from the tense Australian noir of director Ivan Sen’s festival opener Goldstone to Swiss Army Man, that Paul Dano and Daniel Radcliffe led film about a farting corpse with a sporadic compass like erection ‘leading’ a marrooned man to freedom, the festival runs Wednesday 8th – Sunday 19th June at various venues across the city.
Announced at Customs House in Circular Quay in Sydney on Wednesday, SFF director Nashen Moodley explained the festival’s 244 films from over 60 countries will shed light on topics like the plight of refugees, the environment, extremist religion and the relationships individuals have with their governments and their sexuality. And whatever the hell Swiss Army Man is about I guess.
With 12 features in competition for the Sydney Film Prize and the sweet sweet $63,000 that comes with it, the winner will be chosen for “courageous, audacious and cutting-edge filmmaking”.
Along with Sen’s Goldstone, the other tiles in the running also include new works from acclaimed directors: Boo Junfeng (Apprentice), Kleber Mendonça Filho (Aquarius), Kelly Reichardt (Certain Women), Brady Corbet (The Childhood of a Leader), Oliver Hermanus (The Endless River), Xavier Dolan (It’s Only the End of the World), Martin Zandvliet (Land of Mine), Ivo M. Ferreira (Letters From War), Peter Middleton and James Spinney (Notes on Blindness), Anurag Kashyap (Psycho Raman), and Paddy Breathnach (Viva).
Sounds on Screen is back by popular demand of music lovers, with six films exploring the lives and stories of musicians and their art, including Loki himself Tom Hiddleston playing American country music superstar Hank Williams in I Saw The Light.
It’s not just music lovers who the festival is catering for mind you, with cinema-phile also well looked after with Essential Scorcese: Selected by David Stratton, a retrospective featuring 10 of Martin Scorcese‘s best works including Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, Goodfellas and The Age of Innocence. The Six Restorations series will also lovers of classic cinema to see some of the mediums best films “the way they were intended”, including Australian classics Bliss (1985) and The Boys (1998).
Not to be outdone by their international counterparts the SFF is also screingen nine films fresh from Cannes, including Steven Spielberg‘s The BFG and American filmmaker Matt Ross’s Captain Fantastic starring Aragorn aka Viggo Mortensen.
But for those with tastes closer to home, never fear as there will be plenty of modern Aussie cinema, five Australian feature films and eight docos screening for the first time at the festival. I wont’ even bother mentioning the dozens of other screenings taking place throughout a number of categories.
You can check out the full SFF Program for yourself here with full information on everything else available at Festival Hub.
