Australia’s only film festival dedicated to film lovers aged 60 and up, Young at Heart, is returning in February. The festival program includes acclaimed features, special guests, Q&As and cinema classics brought back to their rightful home on the big screen.
Screenings are at Palace Norton Street, Palace Verona and Palace Central, and if you're a senior you're looking at just $8.50 a ticket plus booking fee (sorry, full price is $20). The festival opens with Swimming with Men, which stars Welsh comedic star Rob Brydon as a mature man who joins an all-male synchronised swimming team; there'll be afternoon tea and a glass of sparkling wine before the screening.
Nonna on the Run is an Italian comedy concerning two woman who flee their retirement home in Rome for a trip to Venice – screen icon Claudia Cardinale (Once Upon a Time in the West) is one of the stars. An Australian screen great, Elizabeth Debicki, plays Virginia Woolf in Vita and Virginia, portraying the writer's romance with Vita Sackville-West (Gemma Arterton).
The Heiresses was named Best Film at the Sydney Film Festival last year, and Young at Heart presents an opportunity to see this emotionally compelling Paraguayan movie. Screen favourite Bill Nighy plays a Scrabble obesessive searching for his lost son in Sometimes, Always, Never, and Judi Dench appears in Red Joan, based on the life of British KGB agent Melita Norwood.
On the documentary fron there's Older than Ireland, centring on Irish centenarians; The Eulogy, about great Australian pianist Geoffrey Tozer; and Water and Sugar, looking back at the work of cinematographer Carlo Ponti, famous for films made with Michelangelo Antonioni and Woody Allen.
The classic film returning to the big screen is Belle de Jour, Luis Buñuel's 1967 surrealist story of Severine (Catherine Deneuve), the wife of a wealthy Parisian surgeon who becomes involved in the world of high-class prostitution.
