The Sydney Film Festival has unveiled its complete program for the 73rd edition, spanning 248 films from 81 countries, with 19 titles arriving directly from the Cannes Film Festival as part of an event running June 3-14 at the State Theatre, Sydney Opera House and cinemas across the city.
The festival will open June 3 with the Australian premiere of “Silenced,” Selina Miles’ documentary following international human rights lawyer Jennifer Robinson as she contests the weaponization of defamation law by alleged perpetrators seeking to muzzle survivors and journalists. The Sundance title, which traces the cases of Brittany Higgins, Catalina Ruiz-Navarro and Amber Heard, will be presented by Miles and Robinson in person.
The official competition marks 18 years of the Sydney Film Prize – a AUD$60,000 ($43,100) award for an “audacious, cutting-edge and courageous” film – and draws substantially from this year’s Cannes competition. Titles in contention include Andrey Zvyagintsev’s “Minotaur,” a thriller set in 2022 Russia marking the director’s long-awaited return; Asghar Farhadi‘s “Parallel Tales,” featuring an all-star French cast including Isabelle Huppert and Catherine Deneuve; Kore-eda Hirokazu’s “Sheep in the Box,” a near-future drama in which bereaved parents use AI technology to reconstruct their shattered family; and Paweł Pawlikowski’s “Fatherland,” a portrait set amid the ruins of postwar Germany, following novelist Thomas Mann and his daughter Erika, starring Sandra Hüller and Hanns Zischler.
Also from the Cannes competition are Marie Kreutzer’s “Gentle Monster” with Léa Seydoux, Valeska Grisebach’s “The Dreamed Adventure” and Cristian Mungiu’s English-language debut “Fjord,” a family drama starring Sebastian Stan and Renate Reinsve. From Un Certain Regard, Marie-Clémentine Dusabejambo’s “Ben’Imana” offers an account of post-genocide reconciliation in Rwanda. International prize winners round out the slate, among them Visar Morina’s “Shame and Money” – World Cinema Grand Jury Prize winner at Sundance – Alain Gomis’ “Dao” from the Berlinale competition, and Olivia Wilde’s Sundance hit “The Invite.” Australian horror entry “Leviticus,” Adrian Chiarella’s breakout Sundance title about two teenage boys confronting a shape-shifting evil force, represents local cinema in the competition.
Brazilian filmmaker Kleber Mendonça Filho will preside over the jury, alongside Hungarian filmmaker Ildikó Enyedi, Singaporean filmmaker Boo Junfeng, Australian cinematographer Ari Wegner and Australian First Nations producer and director Sally Riley. The Sydney Film Prize winner will be announced at the closing night gala on June 14.
“We want to invite you to join us at SFF this year, where each moment offers an opportunity for discovery and empathy,” festival director Nashen Moodley said. “Art and cinema help us make sense of the world, take us into the lives of people far away from us, and remind us to remain vigilant about our own rights and freedoms. And we can’t forget, they’re also an enormous source of joy.”
Special presentations at the State Theatre draw from several major festivals. Cannes selections include Ira Sachs’ “The Man I Love,” a 1980s New York romance starring Rami Malek, Tom Sturridge and Rebecca Hall; Jane Schoenbrun’s psychosexual horror “Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma,” with Hannah Einbinder and Gillian Anderson; and Kurosawa Kiyoshi’s samurai epic “The Samurai and the Prisoner.” Ildikó Enyedi’s “Silent Friend,” winner of the Venice Fipresci Prize and starring Tony Leung Chiu-wai and Léa Seydoux in a narrative measured across a hundred years through a single ginkgo tree, also screens in this strand. Michael Sarnoski’s “The Death of Robin Hood,” starring Hugh Jackman, Jodie Comer and Bill Skarsgård, and Yeon Sang-ho’s zombie action film “Colony” from Cannes Midnight further anchor the program. The Australian premieres of the Berlinale Golden Bear winner “Yellow Letters” and Sandra Hüller’s Silver Bear-earning “Rose” are also included.
Australian features lead with Natalie Erika James’ body horror “Saccharine,” Dario Russo’s absurdist folktale “The Fox” – featuring Olivia Colman as a talking fox and Sam Neill as a magpie – and Anthony Maras’ D-Day drama “Pressure,” starring Andrew Scott and Brendan Fraser. Ten local documentaries vie for the AUD$20,000 ($14,400) Documentary Australia Award, with world premieres including “Rodeo Dreams,” “Yumburra” and “The Piano Tuner.”
The broader features program includes notable Asian titles. Anthony Chen’s “We Are All Strangers” – the first-ever Singaporean film selected for the Berlinale Competition – screens alongside Thai director Pen-ek Ratanaruang’s Bangkok revenge thriller “Morte Cucina,” shot by cinematographer Christopher Doyle, and Clara Law’s “Ripples in the Mist,” tracing a pair of Hong Kong women displaced into exile between Taiwan and Australia. Joko Anwar’s prison-set horror-comedy “Ghost in the Cell” appears in the Freak Me Out genre sidebar.
The First Nations Award – carrying a AUD$35,000 ($25,200) prize presented as the world’s largest dedicated to Indigenous filmmaking, supported by Truant Pictures – returns with highlights including Zacharias Kunuk’s supernatural epic “Wrong Husband,” winner of best Canadian film at Toronto, and Banchi Hanuse’s watercolor animation hybrid documentary “Ceremony,” winner of the Audience Award at SXSW. The Sustainable Future Award, worth AUD$40,000 ($28,700) and supported by philanthropist Amanda Maple-Brown, recognizes environmental cinema, with 2026 nominees including “Nuisance Bear,” “Just Look Up” and “Time and Water.”
A retrospective curated by jury president Mendonça Filho – titled The Tropical Trail – spans six decades of Brazilian cinema, anchored by Eduardo Coutinho’s 1984 documentary “Man Marked for Death, Twenty Years Later.” The Classics Restored strand brings new 4K restorations including Tsai Ming-liang’s “Vive L’Amour,” winner of the Venice Golden Lion, T’ang Shushuen’s 1968 Hong Kong independent landmark “The Arch” and Richard Lowenstein’s Australian cult film “He Died with a Felafel in His Hand,” with Lowenstein attending as a festival guest.
variety.com
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