With festival director Nashen Moodley’s glittering program unveiled for the 65th annual Sydney Film Festival (SFF), we highlight several queer gems that will make mining the vast selection for your personal schedule a little easier, and it’s shaping up to be an especially stellar year for lesbian cinema and female directors.
Disobedience
Fresh off his Oscar-win for Best Foreign Picture A Fantastic Woman, catch Chilean writer/director Sebastián Lelio’s English-language debut. Starring Rachel Weisz as Ronit, a New York-based photographer who returns to London following her estranged rabbi father’s death, she’s suffocated by the ultra-orthodox environment she fled. Finding solace in former lover Esti (Rachel McAdams), now married to childhood friend Dovid (Alessandro Nivola), Disobedience is an intensely emotional exploration of faith, love and respect.
Click here for more details or to book tickets
Hard Paint (Tinta Bruta)
With shades of Beach Rats, reclusive teenager Pedro (Shico Menegat), emotionally scarred by homophobic aggression, finds a means of release in nightly webcam sex shows from the safety of his bedroom in Brazilian writer/director Marcio Reolon and Filipe Matzembacher’s haunting sophomore feature. Just as Pedro’s beloved sister reluctantly leaves him to fend for himself, a new hope comes in the initially unwanted form of online rival Leo (Bruno Fernandes). Claiming the queer Teddy Award at the Berlinale, this is erotic and romantic in equal measure.
Click here for more details or to book tickets
The Miseducation of Cameron Post
Up for the official prize at SFF, Brooklyn-based writer/director Desiree Akhavan’s follows up her semi-autobiographical hit Appropriate Behaviour with this adaptation of the Emily M. Danforth novel. Winning the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance, it stars Chloe Grace Moretz as a 16-year-old living with her Evangelical aunt. Busted in the backseat of a car with the prom queen, she gets packed off to a gay conversion camp called God’s Promise to get straightened out, a promise she just can’t keep.
Click here for more details or to book tickets
We The Animals
Shifting between the hard reality of domestic violence and the animated imaginings of pre-teen protagonist Jonah (Evan Rosado), documentary filmmaker Jeremiah Zagar’s queer coming-of-ager attracted positive comparisons to Barry Jenkins’ Moonlight following its Sundance debut. Adapted from Justin Torres’ autobiographical novel, it sees the young lad branching out from his older brothers and their adulation of their troubled father, towards the emerging promise of the neighbouring farmer’s teenaged son.
Click here for more details or to book tickets
The Heiresses (Las Herederas)
Also in contention for SFF’s official competition, Paraguayan writer/director Marcelo Martinessi's debut featuretook home both the Silver Bear and the FIPRESCI prize at the Berlinale. A subtle examination of class and character, middle-aged Chela (Ana Brun) is forced out of her shell and into an improvised Uber-like role in her old Mercedes when outgoing partner Chiquita (Margarita Irun) is arrested for fraud and their wealth disappears.
Click here for more details or to book tickets
The Marriage
Blerta Zeqiri makes the leap from her celebrated shorts with this complex emotional drama that plays out against the long shadow of the 1999 Kosovo war and the region’s continuing political upheaval. Two weeks out from their wedding, Bekim (Alban Ukaj) and fiancée Anita (Adriana Matoshi) travel to the Serbian border to identify bodies that may be her long-missing parents. But when Bekim’s wartime lover Nol (Genc Salihu) returns unexpectedly, old feelings run deep in a deeply homophobic environment.
Click here for more details or to book tickets
L'Animale
After a support role in Katharina Mueckstein’s feature debut Talea, an impressive Sophie Stockinger takes the lead in the Austrian writer-director’s beautifully shot coming-of-age follow up. Playing motocross rider Mati, Stockinger resists her emerging queer identity, just wanting to be seen as one of the boys. But when one of the boys falls for her, she pushes away from their increasingly aggressive outlook, instead drawn to older misfit Carla (Julia Franz Richter). At the same time, her father has his own identity crisis to contend with.
Click here for more details or to book tickets
The Ice King
Long before Adam Rippon grabbed the headlines, figure skater John Curry became the first out and proud Olympian in far less accepting times. From insightful documentarian James Erskine (The Battle of the Sexes), it follows the staggeringly talented star’s pioneering work on the ice, after his dad vetoed ballet when he was young, taking the sport to new heights of creativity. It also explores Curry’s struggles with depression, and the toll of the HIV/AIDs crisis.
Click here for more details or to book tickets
Anchor and Hope
Spanish writer/director Carlos Marques-Marcet taps the stars of his long-distance rom com 10,000km – Natalia Tena and David Verdague – for a very different sort of relationship in his similarly good-humoured second feature. This time she’s one half of a lesbian couple living in a London houseboat, resisting the baby wishes of her partner Eva (Oona Chaplin, Game of Throne’s Talysa Stark). He plays Kat’s visiting bestie Roger, offering a possible solution.
Click here for more details or to book tickets
Good Manners (As Boas Maneiras)
Forget Twilight, horror fans who like a bite of romance should look no further than Brazilian director Juliana Rojas’s genre-bending drama. Desperately broke, Clara (Isabél Zuaa) interviews for a live-in nanny role with rich single-mum-to-be Ana (Marjorie Estiano), and pretty soon their bond is beyond the professional. A whip smart look at both class and race, brace yourself for mayhem as the pregnancy munchies herald the arrival of a baby werewolf. Expect some blood and guts in this Locarno Film Festival special jury prize-winner, but it’s more dark fairy tale than outright gorefest.
Click here for more details or to book tickets
The Sydney Film Festival runs from June 6-17. Click film titles for more info or to book tickets.
