Bloody hell – Sydney Film Festival is nearly here again, and the festival has just announced 26 movies that will screen during the festival, which is only two months away: June 6-17.
The sneak peek has been revealed along with the news that Hoyts Entertainment Quarter Moore Park has been added as a festival venue for the first time (joining the State Theatre, Dendy Opera Quays, Dendy Newtown, Event Cinemas George Street, Art Gallery of NSW, Hayden Orpheum Picture Palace Cremorne, Randwick Ritz, and Casula Powerhouse Arts Centre).
Hoyts Entertainment Quarter will focus on showing family films as well as films in the Screenability program, which focuses on work by filmmakers with a disability.
So what's screening? Here’s our top 12 highlights of the announced films:
1. Westwood: Punk, Icon, Activist
This documentary profiles the great UK fashion designer and pioneer of the punk aesthetic, Vivienne Westwood.
2. Foxtrot
The winner of the Grand Jury Prize at Venice last year, this Israeli film from the director of Lebanon tackles the controversial subject of military service.
3. The Miseducation of Cameron Post
Desiree Akhavan’s film, based on the novel by Emily M Danforth, concerns a teen (Chloe Grace Moretz) sent to a gay conversion therapy camp in the early 1990s. The film won the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance this year.
4. Disobedience
Sebastian Leilo’s previous movie A Fantastic Woman screened at SFF last year and went on to win the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film. His new one is a story of forbidden love in London between Orthodox Jews iplayed by Rachel Weisz and Rachel McAdams.
5. Piercing
Mia Wasikowska plays a prostitute who turns the tables on the man who plans to murder her in a darkly funny film about two people whose kinks are sick and twisted.
6. Ghost Stories
Martin Freeman stars in the film version of a spooky UK stage hit from the League of Gentlemen’s Jeremy Dyson.
7. Anchor and Hope
Two Game of Thones alumni, Natalie Tena and Oona Chaplin, star as a couple who live on a canal boat in London and decide to become parents with help of a Spaniard, Roger (David Verdaguer). Chaplin’s mother, Geraldine Chaplin, plays her on-screen mother (and yes, they are scions of Charlie).
8. I Used to Be Normal: A Boyband Fangirl Story
This Australian documentary looks at four funny girls and women whose lives have all been drastically changed by their love of boybands.
9. Rockabul
Afghanistan’s first and only metal band, District Unknown, is profiled in a documentary by Australian journalist Travls Beard.
10. American Animals
Four teens conspire to steal a copy of the world’s most expensive book in this UK film featuring Barry Keoghan, Ann Dowd, Udo Kier and Blake Jenner.
11. Leave No Trace
You might know Debra Granik as the filmmaker who discovered Jennifer Lawrence by casting her in the brilliant Winter’s Bone. Her new film also tackles the white poor working class, in the story of a 13-year-old girl and her war veteran father (Ben Foster), forced to live in the wilderness, off the grid.
12. My Brilliant Career
Gillian Armstrong’s 1979 adaptation of Miles Franklin’s 1901 novel made stars of Judy Davis and Sam Neill. The film has been restored, and gets a special revival screening at SFF.
The festival has already announced a David Stratton-curated retrospective of ten films by the Finnish director Aki Kaurismäki, whose latest film, The Other Side of Hope, is currently in cinemas.
Flexipasses and subscriptions to Sydney Film Festival 2018 are on sale now. The full program will be announced on May 9.