SWIFF 19
Winner of the Special Jury Award for Breakthrough Filmmaking at Sundance and Top Audience Pick at Hot Docs alongside over 30 other festival wins, Minding the Gap is an astonishing new film about American life. Following three skateboarding friends in a rust belt town, filmmaker Bing Liu pulls out his camera, set to understand why …
“Wittily scripted, sharply characterised, and smartly performed, Book Week is a little gem of a film.” – Film Ink Rising Australian writer/producer/director Heath Davis (Broke, SWIFF 2016) takes it back to school in his new comedy feature, Book Week. Jaded high school English teacher Nick Cutler (Alan Dukes) is forced to re-evaluate his life when …
Australian Premiere “We (women) had to fight a revolution within the revolution.” When the revolution is over, what becomes of the revolutionaries? Nicaraguan women took up arms in the US-backed Contra War, seeking social reform throughout the 1979 Sandanista Revolution. Now benevolent grandmothers, professional executives, and unassuming housewives, these ex-revolutionaries often kept secrets from the …
A lesbian couple contemplate parenthood, family and love in this heartfelt, free-wheeling comic drama, set aboard a dreamy houseboat on a London canal. Eva and Kat live a fairy tale life filled with love, laughter and very little money, until the death of Chorizo, their beloved cat, leaves a certain shaped gap in their life. …
Receiving a 15-minute standing ovation, the Cannes Jury Prize as well as creating a lot of Oscar buzz, this heartfelt drama centres on a runaway boy who attempts to divorce his parents. Written and directed by Nadine Labaki (Caramel), Capharnaum tells the story of 12-year old Zain, who is suing his parents for “giving [him] …
Winner · Grand Jury Prize · Sundance Film Festival Feathers fly in this hilarious, offbeat Sundance award-winning crowdpleaser. Three dysfunctional siblings, Cemel, Kenan and Suzan, journey back to the Turkish village of their birth to help their estranged father fulfil his dying wish. Cemal is an astronaut long settled in Germany; Kenan, a hapless actor …
Ethan Hawke effortlessly steps behind the camera in this daringly unconventional biopic of an unsung country music legend, starring newcomer Benjamin Dickey and winning him the Sundance Special Jury Award for Acting. Blaze Foley spent his early years living in a Georgia treehouse before becoming an underground legend on the Texas Outlaw country music scene …
An unprecedented and extraordinary glimpse at the reality of modern day slavery. Inside an upscale Hungarian house, run by a tyrannical matriarch called Eta, resides a domestic slave, 52-year-old Marish. Marish has been captive in the house for over a decade. She labours 12 hours a day in a factory for a paycheck she must …
Winner · Camera d’Or, Queer Palm, Un Certain Regard Best Actor, FIPRESCI · Cannes Film Festival Lara has two dreams: to become a professional ballet dancer, and to complete her gender transition. She is close to achieving both goals, with a place at an extremely prestigious ballet academy, and a supportive family and team of …
2018 AACTA Nominee – Best Indie Film, Best Lead Actor, Best Cinematography World premiering at Venice Film Festival, landing a nomination a Venice Horizons Award (Best Film), director Jason Raftopoulos is a new vision for Australian cinema. Set in Melbourne, West of Sunshine tracks responsibility-deprived single dad Jim (the late Damian Hill) as he balances …