Sydney Film Festival 2014 Wrap-Up

Now that the 61st Sydney Film Festival has drawn to a close, we look back at the festival as a whole.

Official Competition

Out of the twelve films featured in the SFF’s Official Competition, there can be only one winner, yet the choice of the festival jury is often a contentious one. Last year, Nicholas Winding Refn’s Only God Forgives was a controversial pick in what appeared to be The Act of Killing‘s year. In 2012, Yorgos Lanthimos’ Alps beat out a whole host of international successes like Beasts of the Southern Wild and Lore.

Looking at this year, we have a Golden Bear winner in Black Coal, Thin Ice, a Silver Bear winner in Boyhood and a Venice Jury Prize recipient in Ruin alongside a world premiere (Fell), some highly anticipated international releases (The Rover, Locke, Snowpiercer, The Kidnapping of Michel Houellebecq, 20,000 Days on Earth, and Two Days, One Night) and indie surprises (Fish & Cat and Kumiko).

The winner of the 2014 Sydney Film Prize was Two Days, One Night, directed by Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne. You can read our review of that film here.

Some of the 4:3 staff held a roundtable discussion about the Official Competition, it can be read here.

Notes:

A film cannot win in the 4:3 poll unless three or more writers have seen the film
Only one writer has seen all of the features in competition – Conor Bateman. His pick for best competition feature is Boyhood.

*Title*	No. Staff Seen	High Rec.	Rec.	Not Rec.	S. Not Rec.
20,000 Days on Earth	4	2	2
The Kidnapping of Michel Houellebecq	4		4
Boyhood	9	2	7
The Rover	6		5	1
Locke	5		3	2
Kumiko, the Treasure Hunter	8	1	4	2	1
Two Days, One Night	5		4	1
Ruin	6		2	1	3
Black Coal, Thin Ice	8	2	4	2
Fish & Cat	11	8	2	1
Fell	2	1	1
Snowpiercer	7		4	3

Best Film of the Official Competition: Fish & Cat, dir. Shahram Mokri – IRAN

“Mokri uses a non-linear time structure to play with our narrative orientation, to the extent that it is not always apparent when someone has been offed. However, the clues are there, in a stray foot under leaves and an item handed to someone near the film’s end revealing two kills never seen on screen and one not even hinted at up to that point at all. In retrospect, too, when trying to unravel the plot order and sequence of events, surprises will arise with regard to catalysts for scenes. It’s a film you’re meant to ruminate on and a puzzle, not necessarily meant to be solved, but to be savoured.” – Review by Conor Bateman

Best Non-Competition Feature: Abuse of Weakness, dir. Catherine Breillat – FRANCE

“This close reading of the character and text becomes ultimately the game of the film, less spectator sport than a complex choose-your-own adventure, constructing our own theories inside a probing expedition into one woman’s personal trauma. What the film presupposes is that this abuse of weakness that Rocancourt exploited was not merely that of a recovering stroke victim still not with all her wits together. Although Breillat doesn’t discount this altogether, she courageously hypothesises about other ‘weaknesses’ that led to her own private misfortune.” – Review by Brad Mariano

Best Non-Competition Documentary: Jodorowsky’s Dune, dir. Frank Pavich – USA

“Structurally, the documentary is simple, composed of interviews, recordings, scans of storyboard designs, and brief animations. Pavich might not innovate within the medium, but it isn’t necessary. The subject compels us on its own, and there’s a sense that Jodorowsky’s vision would only be obscured by visual adulteration. I’m reminded of a scene in which Jodorowsky explains his then-willingness to die so that Dune would be made. Undoubtedly, Pavich could played this against scenes of mutilation in Jodoorwsky’s prior films, but he ignores such cheap theatrics, knowing it’s better just to let the camera run.” – Review by Peter Walsh

Best Focus on China Feature: Lake August (dir. Yang Heng) AND ‘Til Madness Do Us Part (dir Wang Bing)

“When Heng does focus in on his subjects, he does it with a rare intimacy that neither romanticises nor trivialises them; presenting them as highly defined, impermanent and self-aware – never detached from a realism that carefully drifts between quiet contentment, sadness and disinterest. It’s almost as if Heng – originally from Hunan – is quietly reminding the audience that there is a quieter, slower-moving, and equally complex world existing in the background. Much like in Lake August, Heng is concerned with every aspect of the frame, as well as every aspect of society. It’s this attention to detail in all of its manifestations that makes the film one of the most delicate, important and powerful films to screen at Sydney Film Festival.” – Review by Jeremy Elphick

“Although ’Til Madness Do Us Part was the chosen title for the English release, its original title, Feng Ai (疯爱), more accurately translates to “madness” and “love”. After facing Wang Bing’s latest epic, it’s confusing as to why the documentary wasn’t given such a title as the two words are perfectly summative of the experience that ’Til Madness Do Us Part depicts. After spending four hours with Wang Bing in the facility, it’s easy to feel exhausted and emotionally drained. It doesn’t take long for the reality that faces the human beings in the documentary to set in. It’s a pain a lot longer than that; and Bing’s ability to remind the viewer of these values is one of of his rare skills that continues to leave him as one of the worlds most lauded documentary makers.” – Review by Jeremy Elphick

Best Freak Me Out Feature: Killers (dir. Mo Brothers) – INDONESIA

“Killers is the film A Serbian Film should have been – it’s confronting, it’s brutal, and it has something very important to say about the normalization of violence and misogyny in society by focusing on our complicit role as spectators to this violence, but unlike A Serbian Film it’s subtle. The film never assaults the audience purely for the sake of assault, and most of the violence occurs just out of frame, leaving the terror to stew in the imagination. The Mo Brothers want us to question our complicity in violent actions which are disseminated through modern media (especially considering the pervasion of visual representations of death online and in the media), with a particular interest in the effect this will have on future generations who have been raised in a time of freely accessible internet with increasingly proficient recording equipment in their pockets, and in this respect they are highly successful.” – Review by Felix Hubble

Worst Received Film of the Festival: Miss Violence, dir. Alexander Avranas – GREECE

“The film never goes beyond what it sets up for itself, it never apes any of its predecessors in the Greek New Wave. In fact, it perhaps is a true bastardisation of that movement, replacing oddity with degradation and lacking any substantive characterisation. It seems like it’s trying to be clever with regard to subverting audience expectations or in its depiction of a patriarchal figure as somehow emblematic of Greek societal structures in the 1980s. Instead it’s dumb, unsubtle and filled only with some weird fixation on shock value, the first actual scene of any sexual activity serving this notion.” – Review by Conor Bateman

Most Divisive Film of the Festival: Ruin, dir. Michael Cody and Amiel Courtin-Wilson – AUS

“Without a desire for a slow burning, subtle work that serves as more of a thematic snapshot than a film, it’s difficult to recommend seeing something like Ruin. At the same time, Courtin-Wilson and Cody’s film sets out precisely to fall into such a mould and it largely succeeds in doing so; it isn’t a film for everyone, but it does manage to satisfy the audience it targets.” – Review by Jeremy Elphick

Least Divisive Film of the Festival: Boyhood, dir. Richard Linklater – USA

“The last section of the film, in which Mason Jr. develops a taste for photography and personal independence, can’t help but be emblematic of something like Joyce’s A Portait of the Artist as a Young Man and, like that book, Linklater doesn’t at all attempt to craft a story intentionally universal or all-encompassing. It’s all about a perspective, with the level of emotional depth and insight that makes it so universally compelling.” – Review by Conor Bateman

Best Acting Performance: Isabelle Huppert, Abuse of Weakness

“As for Maud, very few actors could have made this character, so deliberately underwritten, as captivating as Isabelle Huppert does. At any one point, whether it be a tortured close-up of Huppert’s face, or an interaction between Vilko and Maud, we can read so many conflicting emotions and thought processes in Huppert’s truly astonishing, layered performance.” – Review by Brad Mariano

Best Use of Music and Musical Score: The Rover, Sam Petty (Sound Design)

“The sound design by Sam Petty is exhilarating, moving from electronic snarl to a faint saxophone line at the film’s climax that calls to mind Blade Runner. The film takes a massive risk at one point in the film, from an aural standpoint, including a contemporary pop song for no clear narrative purpose yet it works in a way I wasn’t expecting. Michôd and Petty use that sequence to both startle the audience into recognition of a musical work whilst making a (perhaps weak) point about Chinese ownership of content distribution post-’collapse’. It’s a bold stylistic statement that rejects a need to adhere to specific genre elements and it declares the film as its own beast.” – Review by Conor Bateman

Best Cinematography: Black Coal, Thin Ice, Zeng Jian (Cinematographer)

“It’s easy to discount Black Coal as a “beautifully shot film” before saying “but”. That said, the cinematography and the filming of Black Coal, Thin Ice is a lot more sublime, a lot more intricate and has far more to it than simply being ‘beautiful’ – its an artwork primarily concerned with the aesthetic and this defines the film. Diao Yinan works with an incredible depth of frame in his shots throughout and there exists an intrinsic complexity to every frame that only begins to bleed through in 2nd and 3rd viewings.” – Review by Jeremy Elphick

Interviews (16)

Retrospective

Our look at the James Benning mini-retrospective can be found here, including capsule reviews of American Dreams (lost and found), Chicago Loop, Fire and Ice, Deseret, Nightfall and Gabe Klinger’s Double Play: James Benning + Richard Linklater.

Reviews (65)

Highly Recommended	Recommended	Not Recommended	Strongly Not Recommended
Boyhood 20,000 Days on Earth Killers Lake August Abuse of Weakness Appropriate Behaviour Jodorowsky’s Dune Fish & Cat Fell Stop the Pounding Heart Siddharth Winter Sleep	Tim’s Vermeer Finding Fela Starred Up The Unknown Known Calvary The Kidnapping of Michel Houellebecq Jimi: All is by My Side Night Moves ’Til Madness Do Us Part You’re Sleeping Nicole Black Coal, Thin Ice Black Panther Woman Two Faces of January Dead Snow 2: Red vs. Dead Life Itself The Lunchbox The Rover Willow Creek Tom at the Farm Omar Ilo Ilo Happy Christmas The Great Museum The Second Game The Kingdom of Dreams and Madness The Little Death Dancing in the Room Concerning Violence Keep on Keepin’ On Tamako in Moratorium Kumiko, the Treasure Hunter How To Train Your Dragon 2 Human Capital Mommy Two Days, One Night Frank Eastern Boys Ruin Tale of Princess Kaguya Demonstration The Case Against 8 Dior & I	Stage Fright Love Eternal Cold in July Gabrielle Snowpiercer Locke E-Team The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby: Her + Him Is The Man Who Is Tall Happy?	For Those Who Can Tell No Tales Miss Violence

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