Australia’s 71st Sydney Film Festival (SFF) concluded on Sunday June 16th in an optimistic mood, with prizes galore, potential for increased ticket sales and an influx of young moviegoers.
Ticket sales are estimated to increase by more than 10% over last year, making 2024 the second busiest year on record after 2019.
“This is absolutely phenomenal and we feel very optimistic about the future,” said festival director Nashen Moodley. “I can’t say exactly, but if you look at which films have sold, it seems like the younger demographic is increasing.”
Paola Corteresi’s post-World War II Italian melodrama There’s Still Tomorrow won the festival’s major prize, the A$60,000 Sydney Film Award. The awards ceremony, for films that are “bold, cutting-edge and courageous,” were announced by jury president Danis Tanovic at Sydney’s magnificent 1920s painting palace, the State Theatre.
American director Alina Simone’s Black Snow, about Siberian environmental activist Natalia Zubkova, has won the world’s most valuable environmental film award, the Sustainable Future Award of A$40,000. To highlight how climate change will affect our future, Amanda Maple Brown, the award’s leading philanthropist, brought her young son on stage to announce the winners, while Simone I accepted my award at Prestige with my daughter by my side. Recorded acceptance speech.
The 11-minute First Horse, set in New Zealand in the 1820s, beat out seven feature films and two other short films to win the inaugural First Horse Prize, the world’s largest prize for indigenous filmmaking. He won the Nations Award of AUD 35,000.
Director James Bradley’s monumental 12-year study of Shen Jiawei and China’s turbulent recent history, Welcome to Babel, wins A$20,000 Australian Documentary Award did.
popular movies
Mr Moodley singled out the Australian films he thought had the most international potential among world premieres. Two are documentaries. Paul Clarke’s Midnight Oil: The Hardest Line, about an Australian rock band, and Ian Darling’s The Pool, a love letter to Sydney’s iconic pool, Bondi Icebergs.
“(‘Midnight Oil’) has a huge following around the world and the film did incredibly well on opening night,” said Moodley of Midnight Oil, the only local film to enter the main competition. said. “It’s incredibly well-crafted and exciting to hear that music again, and it’s also a film about the transformation of a country. Many of the international filmmaker guests knew some of the songs, but , I didn’t know about the band’s political history.
He also mentioned Will Howarth and Tom McKeith’s sci-fi film In Vitro, which is set on a remote ranch.
Outgoing Head of Programming and Documentary Programmer Jenny Nabor highlighted three world premiere documentaries by Australian directors that were well-received by Sydney audiences. Rachel Lane’s Charmian Clift: Life Burns High is a partially Greek-language film about the popular Australian author of the 1960s. Hydra island. Madeleine Heatherton-Mio’s Mozart’s Sisters explores the theory that Maria-Anna Mozart played a larger role in her brother’s music than previously known. and Van Alpert’s Skateboarding, about a boy who dreams of becoming a professional skateboarder.
Mr Moodley said the Sydney screening of Jane Cherblanc’s Sundance premiere of I Saw The TV Glow was one of the festival’s most popular. “We kept adding screenings, but they kept selling out,” he said. “Young audiences wanted to see this movie and it created incredible momentum.”
The supernatural television genre film is one of four festival titles currently playing in the “Return by Popularity” slot after the festival officially ends. The films include British director Clare Titley’s documentary The Contestant, about an extreme Japanese reality show, and Lee Tamahori’s drama The Convert, starring Guy Pearce and Roj Sigurdsveinsson. ” (original title), and Sumari Gan’s documentary “The Home Game” (original title) about an Icelandic soccer match.
After screening at the festival, six films were screened for Australia and New Zealand: All We Imagine As Light (Rialto), Grand Tour (Potential), September Says and The Pool (Madman), Caught By The Tides ( Little Monster), Ghost Trail (Revenge). All of the productions except The Pool were performed for the first time at Cannes.
