Sydney Film Festival Drops Its Full Programme

The season of film festivals is upon us, and one of Australia’s biggest has unveiled an absolutely stellar lineup for its 61st incarnation. The Sydney Film Festival today revealed the full programme for the eleven-day festival, along with the contenders for the prestigious Sydney Film Prize, and the opening and closing night features.

The festival kicks off on June 4th with an opening night presentation of 20,000 Days on Earth – the innovative dramatised documentary on iconic Australian musician Nick Cave. Eleven days later, on June 15th, the festival draws to a close with a screening of the Taika Waititi and Jemaine Clement directed What We Do In The Shadows; a comedic mockumentary about a group of vampire flatmates living in New Zealand.
But there’s so much more to see in the days between those two blockbuster events, including screenings of the films entered in competition for the Sydney Film Prize that includes, along with 20,000 Days on Earth, films such as David Michod’s Animal Kingdom follow-up The Rover; the sparse and tense Tom Hardy vehicle Locke; Richard Linklater’s 12 year passion project, Boyhood; and the brand new Australian film Fell.
The program itself is chock-a-block full of cinematic treats, and you’re bound to find something to your taste. Highlights include Appropriate Behaviour, a dryly funny film best described as a queer Persian-American version of Annie Hall or Girls; The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby: Him & Her, a wildly ambitious double feature telling the story of a broken relationship from two different viewpoints; Happy Christmas, Joe Swanberg’s directorial follow-up to the excellent Drinking Buddies, starring Anna Kendrick, Melaine Lynskey and Lena Dunham; Australian comic actor Josh Lawson’s directorial debut, The Little Death; Night Moves, a tense drama about a group of environmental activists starring Jesse Eisenberg, Peter Sarsgaard and Dakota Fanning; the maximum James Franco production, Palo Alto; and the Cannes darling French comedy, You’re Sleeping Nicole.
Couple that with the Australian premiere of How To Train Your Dragon 2, a tribute programme to the immortal Studio Ghibli, and screenings of classics such as Rebel Without A Cause and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and you’re absolutely spoiled for choice.
UPDATE: A late addition to the programme aimed at Studio Ghibli diehards is The Kingdom of Dreams and Madness, an intriguing documentary which focuses on the studio’s three founders – directors Isao Takahata and Hayao Miyazaki, and producer Toshio Suzuki – during the production of Takahata’s The Tale of Princess Kaguya and Miyazaki’s The Wind Rises, which has since been nominated for an Oscar. 
The Sydney Film Festival runs from June 4th until the 15th. You can dive into the programme and start mapping out your festival movements over on their website RIGHT NOW.

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