Sydney Film Festival 2021 program: Dune, The French Dispatch, Here Out West, Titane and more

Fans have been waiting years but only a lucky few managed to score tickets to a coveted early sneak peak.

After months in lockdown, it almost seems wild to be thinking about the Sydney Film Festival.

But, with NSW reopening from Monday, it’s given the festival organisers the confidence to plough ahead with the already twice-delayed 2021 programs.

The festival is slated to run between November 3 and November 14, in cinemas across Sydney but the big premieres, including Opening and Closing Night, will be at the State Theatre.

There are scores of movies to check out over the 12-day program, but here are our top picks.

Dune: The good news is Denis Villeneuve’s long awaited sci-fi epic starring Timothee Chalatmet and Rebecca Ferguson is playing at SFF weeks before its national release in December. The bad news it’s already sold out. There was only one session, and the tickets went super fast. Everyone who missed out will have to wait until its national release in December.

Petite Maman: French filmmaker Celine Sciamma follows up her searing Portrait of a Lady on Fire with Petite Maman, a tender coming-of-age story about an eight-year-old girl exploring the woods of her recently deceased grandmother’s home. Something of a ghost-story, it’s a film about the bonds between mother and child.

Here Out West is Sydney Film Festival’s Opening Night film.

Here Out West: Eight stories intertwine in this film about the people and communities of western Sydney, a tapestry of the Australian experience as told by emerging writers and filmmakers.

The Card Counter: Directed by Paul Schrader, The Card Counter stars Oscar Isaac as a small-time gambler who stays under the radar by limiting his bets who meets a woman who wants to stake him. Underscoring the film is a redemption story and the legacy of the US military’s actions in Iraq.

Titane: Julia Ducournau’s film won the top prize at Cannes, a wildly subversive and challenging movie that supposedly evokes the spirit of David Lynch, David Cronenberg and Garspar Noe, a tale of body horror about a young car crash survivor who goes on to have a peculiar relationship with automobiles.

The Power of the Dog: Jane Campion’s first film with a male central protagonist stars Benedict Cumberbatch as a cattle rancher mired in his own toxic conceptions of what it means to be a man – hard and unforgiving. His rage is challenged when his brother marries a woman who comes to live on their ranch with her son.

Benedict Cumberbatch in The Power of the Dog. Picture: Netflix

A Hero: Two-time Oscar winner Asghar Farhadi’s latest film is a story about a man who is in prison for unpaid debts. When he secures a two-day temporary release, he and his secret girlfriend come across a bag of gold. The film is rooted in a rich social critique of justice, expectations and small-time fame.

Memoria: Thai director Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s Memoria is set in Colombia, starring Tilda Swinton as a British expat who, when visiting her sister in Bogota, is inspired to embark on a sensory memory tour after being triggered by a loud bang.

A Tale of Love and Desire: A Parisian love story between a literature student at the Sorbonne and his Tunisian classmate who asks him to show her around the city of love – only his suburban experience is far from the famous tourist stops. A romance with desire and spark that also asks questions about national identity and belonging.

The French Dispatch: Cinephiles have been waiting to feast on the visual delights of Wes Anderson’s anticipated movie set at a fictional New Yorker-style publication in France. Told through a series of vignettes, the movie’s enormous ensemble cast includes Timothee Chalamet, Bill Murray, Frances McDormand, Tilda Swinton and Elisabeth Moss.

The French Dispatch won’t be released nationally until December.

Bergman Island: From Mia Hanson-Love and starring Tim Roth, Vicky Krieps and Mia Wasikowska, Bergman Island is about a creative couple who move to the island where Swedish filmmaker Ingmar Bergman lived and died. They hope to tap into a well of inspiration but reality and fiction soon blur.

Wyrmwood: Apocalypse: The sequel to a cult zombie flick, this Australian movie is centred on a redemption-seeking character named Rhys, who teams up with a group of survivors to rescue a girl who could hold the cure to this zombie virus.

Never Gonna Snow Again: This Polish-German magical realism comedy is about a Russian-speaking masseur who unexpectedly builds a cult following inside a gated community with his gifted touch, a movie that explores modern suburban malaise.

Parallel Mothers: Pedro Almodovar and Penelope Cruz’s seventh collaboration together returns to a theme the Spanish filmmaker has obsessively explored in his work, motherhood. This story is about two women, both single, who gives birth at the same time in the same maternity ward.

Parallel Mothers is Penelope Cruz and Pedro Almodovar’s seventh collaboration.

The Drover’s Wife: The Legend of Molly Johnson: Leah Purcell has adapted for the screen her own novel and stage play, which based on Henry Lawson’s short story, an outback western about a heavily pregnant woman fending for herself.

Quo Vadis, Aida?: The city of Srebrenica was supposed to be under the protection of the UN but when the Serbian forces march in and the town’s citizens are forced to flee, it sparks chaos and tragedy. At the centre of it is Aida, a UN translator desperately trying to keep her husband and sons safe.

Zola: When the source material is a viral tweet thread you know you’re in for something different. Zola is a wild story about a stripper being dragooned by a new friend into a trip that turns into a bizarre misadventure.

King Richard: Will Smith is already generating Oscar buzz for his performance as Richard Williams, father to Serena and Venus, as he strives to raise two sporting legends, cementing their and his legacy.

One Second: Legendary Chinese director Zhang Yimou’s ode to cinema and film was to debut in Berlin in 2019 but was pulled from the festival at the last moment due to “technical issues”. Many suspect the heavy hand of the Chinese government but it’s likely we’ll never know for sure. This released version is a story set during the Cultural Revolution, about a fugitive’s search for a strip of film.

Originally published as Sydney Film Festival 2021 program: Dune, The French Dispatch, Here Out West, Titane and more