SWIFF 19
Director Christian Petzold’s follow up to award-darling Phoenix (SWIFF 2016) examines identity in Nazi-occupied France. Runner-up to the coveted Golden Bear at Berlin Film Festival, Transit follows Georg, fleeing wartime France, assuming the identity of a dead author whose papers he possesses. On escaping to Marseilles, Georg meets a young woman looking for her husband; …
Working within a broken criminal justice system, a team of rebel heroines work to change the way women arrested for prostitution are prosecuted. When a woman leaves her pimp, it’s called “blowin’ up.” And in Blowin’ Up, director Stephanie Wang-Breal looks at an experimental court in Queens, NYC, with Judge Toko Serita advocating for, rather …
The ultimate low-key, feelgood comedy, starring Nick Offerman, Toni Collette, Blythe Danner and Ted Danson. When his landlady (Toni Collette) reluctantly raises the rent, Frank’s (Offerman) life choices are pulled into sharp focus, helped along by his friend and local barkeep Dave (Ted Danson) along with his quiet determination to dust off his old music …
Winner of the Audience Award at both Sydney and Melbourne Film Festivals. A group of troubled boys are on a perilous course towards jail until they meet up with the rough talking, free-wheeling cowboy, Bernie Shakeshaft, and hit the road with his legendary dog jumping team. This observational documentary, filmed over two years, follows boys …
The untold story behind Taylor Steele’s 1992 pivotal surf epic, executive produced by Robert Redford. Steel’s 1992 home movie, Momentum has played endlessly on loop worldwide in surf shops, ironically gathering its own speed as it follows a ragtag pack of teenage surfers spending a summer chasing their perfect waves on Oahu. The moment when …
World Premiere SWIFF proudly presents the World Premiere of Becoming Colleen: Finding the Shoe That Fits – the heartfelt true story of a Coffs Harbour woman negotiating her gender transition later in life. The first Coffs Harbour feature to ever screen at the SWIFF, Becoming Colleen offers an important and timely discussion about diversity in …
Legendary provocateur Gaspar Noé returns to screen with a liberal dose of sex, drugs and music in this audacious and viscerally-affecting Cannes award-winner. Artistic, unnerving, and out of control, Climax takes place on the outskirts of Paris in the dead of winter. Shot in real time, in a dance studio at the end of year …
Documentarian Jennifer Fox makes her feature debut with a bold blend of fact and fiction, investigating her own adolescent trauma, as portrayed by an exceptional Laura Dern. When Fox’s mother (Ellen Burstyn) finds a story that Jennifer wrote as a teenager, she is immediately alarmed to find it depicts abuse at the hands of Jenny’s …
Mega-mines and pastoral development threaten not only the Kimberley region’s vast and unspoiled beauty, but the Indigenous communities’ sacred links to Country. Follow Traditional Owners such as Bardi activist and musician Albert Wiggan and Yimardoowarra academic Dr Anne Poelina as they question what meaningful negotiation looks like, whilst industry pressure exposes the limits of land …
Winner – Special Jury Prize – Sundance Film Festival In 1981, a freshman arrives at his new college dorm for his first day at college. People are waving and asking how his Summer was, but he’s never met them before. A student comes up and mentions he didn’t think he’d be back this year. The …