Shirley Barrett's South Solitary will open the Sydney Film Festival on June 2, organisers announced today.
South Solitary is Barrett's first feature since 2000's Walk the Talk, and it pairs father-daughter acting duo Barry and Miranda Otto as a mismatched uncle and niece, who relocate to a remote island in the 1920s.
In other news, new works by Todd Solondz and Michael Winterbottom are in contention for Australia's richest cash prize - the $60,000 Sydney Film Prize.
2010 marks the third incarnation of the official competition, which aims to reward “courageous, audacious and cutting edge cinema”. In past years the gong has gone to tough gritty prison dramas Hunger (dir: Steve McQueen) and Bronson (dir: Nicholas Winding Refn).
Other films in contention for the Sydney Film Prize include: Todd Solondz's Life During Wartime; Christopher Morris' Jihadist comedy Four Lions; Michael Winterbottom's The Killer Inside Me; Romanian filmmaker Florin Serban's prison drama If I Want to Whistle, I Whistle, which won the Grand Jury Prize in Berlin this year; How I Ended the Summer, from Russia's Alexej Popogrebski; Brillante Mendoza's celebration of Filipino grandmothers, Lola; Iranian artist Shirin Neshat's 1950s-era Women Without Men and Haitian Raoul peck's Moloch Tropical.
The competition will aslo feature three films direct from Cannes: Julie Bertucelli's French-Australian co-production The Tree, Apichatpong Weerasethakul's Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives, and Xavier Dolon's Heartbeats.
Australian filmmaker Ben C Lucas' world premiere of his high school drama, Wasted on the Young, will also screen in competition.
