Sydney Film Festival launches 70th program
Warwick Thornton’s new film featuring Cate Blanchett as an outback nun, The New Boy, will open the Sydney Film Festival.
Warwick Thornton’s new feature with Cate Blanchett as a nun in a remote monastery has yet to have its world premiere at the Cannes film festival but already it has been declared a work of genius.
The Sydney Film Festival will screen The New Boy at its opening-night gala next month, before it goes on general release in July. While Thornton is still putting the finishing touches on the film, Sydney Film Festival director Nashen Moodley has seen it and says it is magnificent.
The performances are led by Blanchett, Wayne Blair and Deborah Mailman, and the film has an outstanding cast of young actors including newcomer Aswan Reid as the new boy of the title. Nick Cave has written the score.
“It’s about a group of boys, all orphans, who are housed in the monastery and work there, and it’s about how the new boy disrupts that atmosphere – in sometimes wonderful ways and sometimes disturbing ways,” Moodley says.
“Aswan Reid is totally magnetic as the new boy. The monastery is being run by a renegade nun, played by Cate Blanchett, and it’s very much about the connection between these two, and the new boy’s huge impact on the monastery.”
The 70th edition of the Sydney Film Festival has almost 240 films from 67 countries screening across the 12-day program. Among the titles in competition for the $60,000 Sydney Film Prize are Thornton’s The New Boy; Christian Petzold’s drama Afire, which won the Silver Bear at Berlin; Monster, by Kore-eda Hirokazu; and Fallen Leaves, a gentle comedy by Aki Kaurismaki.
Moodley says Cobweb, also screening in competition, is an unexpected comedy from South Korea’s Kim Jee-woon.
“He is known for his action and horror films, but this time he has made a comedy about a filmmaker in 1970s Korea, at a time of heavy censorship,” Moodley says. “It is about the director struggling, getting the actors back, facing the censorship, and facing the costs. It’s brilliantly done.”
He says Kore-eda’s latest, Monster, is “an incredible, Rashomon-type film told from three perspectives that really keeps you on the edge of your seat. It’s a fascinating film.”
First-time feature directors showing their debut films in competition are Australia’s Alice Englert with Bad Behaviour; Charlotte Regan’s British working-class comedy Scrapper; and Celine Song’s romance Past Lives, which was a hit at the Sundance and Berlin festivals.
The Mother of All Lies from Morocco’s Asmae El Moudir, Art College 1994, an animation by Liu Jian, and Joram by Devashish Makhija also are finalists.
Rounding out the 12-film competition is a new documentary, The Dark Emu Story, examining the phenomenon that was Bruce Pascoe’s description of First Nations’ agricultural methods before white settlement. Moodley says the film, directed by Allan Clarke and produced by Blackfella Films, looks at the various viewpoints that circulated around the book after it was first published in 2014.
“It goes into the controversy: the academics and other people who took the book to task, and it looks at the impact on Bruce Pascoe’s life,” Moodley says.
“It’s a remarkable film that goes into the culture wars, but also speaks to various people who work in fields related to the book. It takes forward the debate in a way that’s not ugly.”
Other festival highlights include Daina Reid’s psychological thriller Run Rabbit Run, starring Sarah Snook, and choreographer Benjamin Millepied’s directorial debut Carmen, a take on the familiar story of a femme fatale that was filmed in Australia during the pandemic but is set in Mexico and the US. It features Paul Mescal and Melissa Barrera as Carmen, and dancers from Sydney Dance Company. Moodley describes it as a “contemporary, quite political take on the Carmen story, with incredible dance sequences”.
Moodley is also excited to be showing Wes Anderson’s new comedy Asteroid City, which he says is “very Wes Anderson in the most wonderful way”.
“It’s set at a junior stargazers convention where they bring all these hyper-intelligent children from around the country, along with their parents, to talk about science and space and show off their incredible inventions,” he says. “But something world-changing happens while they are in Asteroid City – and the film is about the repercussions of this event.”
The festival offers a showcase of Australian cinema, from independent directors to senior industry figures.
Jane Campion will be honoured with a retrospective of her nine feature films, along with the local premiere of a biography, Jane Campion, Cinema Woman, by Julie Bertuccelli. Campion will appear in conversation with The Australian’s David Stratton on June 10.
And five local filmmakers will screen their small-budget films in the Independent in Spirit program. They are Love Road, Sunflower, Birdeater, Tennessine and The Big Dog, about a stockbroker with a fetish for financial domination.
“These are wonderful calling cards for young filmmakers and there is a lot of promise in them,” Moodley says. “They are very different, but there is an independent spirit that unifies them. Some are funny, some are extremely serious, some take a hard look at an element of Australian society. They are all doing something interesting.
“We want to highlight these new makers of feature films, and this is a great opportunity for them to present their work to an audience, and hopefully it leads to them advancing in their careers.”
The Sydney Film Festival was first held in 1954, founded by cinema enthusiasts from the University of Sydney. As the festival unveils its 70th program, Moodley says it has retained its community atmosphere.
“Though the festival has changed a great deal over the years, and is accessible to a far larger audience, there is still very much a sense of community,” he says. “People feel a sense of ownership and that’s an incredible thing.”
Sydney Film Festival, June 7-18.