SWIFF 20
“Shia LaBeouf shines in this funny, heartwarming adventure … [but] Gottsagen, an actor with Down syndrome, is a real find, and is the heart and soul of the entire film.” – The Playlist. Tyler (Shia LaBeouf in a career-best performance) skirts conflict wherever he goes, scratching out a simple life fishing for crabs in sun-drenched …
Jesse Eisenberg sweeps the leg in this jet-black, deadpan comedy that hits the American man where it hurts. Jesse Eisenberg plays Casey, an objectively weak human being – meek in his personal relationships, timid in his workplace, and generally terrified in public interactions. After failing to flee from conflict, Casey is attacked and mugged by …
NSW Premiere. “It was just a colour out of space—a frightful messenger from unformed realms of infinity beyond all Nature as we know it; from realms whose mere existence stuns the brain and numbs us with the black extra-cosmic gulfs it throws open before our frenzied eyes.” – H.P Lovecraft. Adapted from the legendary H.P …
Winner · Documentary Prize · Cannes Film Festival. Winner · Audience Award, Grand Jury Prize · SXSW. An intimate and epic journey into the female experience of war, For Sama is told as a cinematic love letter from mother to daughter in the midst of the Syrian Civil War, which rages on right now, today …
“A powerful punch to the solar plexus … notices things that others would rather just skim over, like the kind of racism that blends right in with everyday life, so well that you hardly notice it anymore.” – Cineuropa. Armeena Bakri (Danielle Horvat) delivers a powerful, cutting monologue into the microphone. Her gaze holds her …
Shot in the stark black and white of a xeroxed night club flyer, Beats is an energetic, nostalgic flashback to 1990’s Scotland, set over one last night out as new laws now criminalise youth culture and those found ‘gathering around repetitive beats’ of the housing commission’s thumping underground electronic dance music uprising. Against this backdrop, …
A ravishing visual feast from film artist, Victor Kossakovsky, Aquarela takes a deep dive into watery realms around the world, offering up an experience that can truly be described as immersive. Composed from footage shot with the latest high-tech stabilisation equipment and waterproof cameras, and filming at a rate of 96 frames per second, embrace …
SWIFF shines a spotlight on the Prince of Darkness in this funny, entertaining and intelligent documentary on the rise of The Satanic Temple in America. The Arkansas State Capitol has just erected a statue of the 10 commandments on its front lawn. In the name of religious freedom, Lucien Greaves, activist and co-founder of The …
Antonio Banderas in a career high, earned himself the Best Actor Award at Cannes for this reflection of life, love and pain from legendary Spanish director Pedro Almodóvar. Banderas plays Salvador Mallo, a director in the autumn of his life and career with a range of medical ailments in artistic limbo. This, and the fleeting …
Winner · Special Jury Award (Cinematography) · Sundance Film Festival. In Mexico City, 9 million people are serviced by 45 government ambulances. This lack of available services has super-charged the privatised ambulance industry, with fleets of opportunists, mavericks, and cowboys literally racing each other to be the first to arrive at horrific emergencies in the …
