Sydney Film Festival prizes honour Aussie talent in night of star-studded glamour

Homegrown filmmakers and artists took a well-deserved bow at the Sydney Film Festival’s closing gala on Sunday night.

A Still from Keep Stepping by Australian filmmaker Luke Cornish, which follows two female performers training for Australia’s biggest street dance competition. It took out the documentary award at The Sydney Film Festival.

Homegrown filmmakers and artists took a well-deserved bow at the Sydney Film Festival’s closing gala on Sunday night, where some of the biggest names in Australian film and TV graced the red carpet for a night of glamour.

The 69th Sydney Film Festival, which marks a return to the event’s mid-year timeslot after it was postponed to November last year because of the pandemic, saw coming-of-age film Close by Belgian filmmaker Lukas Dhont take out the Sydney Film Prize.

The international jury, headed by Australian actor David Wenham, awarded the Documentary Australia Award prize worth $10,000 to Keep Stepping – which follows two women navigating the world of competitive street dancing – by Australian filmmaker Luke Cornish.

Jury members Documentary Australia chief executive Mitzi Goldman and filmmakers Tosca Looby and Kamar Ahmad Simon described Keep Stepping as a remarkable look at a subculture that has far more to it than ­“appears on the surface”.

“The community in the film have much to tell us about family, identity, belonging, hard work, testing limits, love and acceptance. The film is sensitively crafted … and edited and its characters are mesmerising.”

The Dendy Awards for Australian Short Films, the inaugural AFTRS Craft Award and the Dendy Live Action Short Award went to the creators of animated film Donkey, which from the perspective of three Anangu women tells the story of how donkeys make valuable helpers in the remote APY Lands.

The Dendy Live Action Short Award and Rouben Mamoulian Award for Best Director were presented to Australian filmmakers Luisa Martiri and Tanya Modini for The Moths Will Eat Them Up.

Filmmaker and performer Kylie Bracknell was awarded the $20,000 2022 Deutsche Bank Fellowship for First Nations Film Creatives.

Sydney Film Festival director Nashen Moodley said festival’s juries were impressed by the “wonderful and perceptive” story­­telling screened at the event.