Tilda Swinton was on her way from Fiji, where she’d been filming with a six-person crew on a remote island, to the Marrakech International Film Festival to present a movie made with her childhood friend Joanna Hogg, when she made a pitstop in Sydney for an unusual engagement.

“I nearly didn’t make it here,” she told the theatre-full of people she’d come to connect with. She’d been making the film in a Fijian village with no Wi-Fi, no running water and no electricity, a 12-hour ride by container ship away, she explained. “We were told, ‘Yeah, I think [the ship’s] going to come and pick you up on Friday. And if it doesn’t come, it will be another month.’