Now that the 62nd Sydney Film Festival has drawn to a close, we look back at the festival as a whole.
Official Competition
The winner of the 2015 Sydney Film Prize was Arabian Nights, directed by Miguel Gomes. 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.
| Title | No. Staff Seen | High Rec. | Rec. | Not Rec. | S. Not Rec. |
| The Daughter | 9 | 3 | 4 | 2 | – |
| Strangerland | 5 | – | 2 | 3 | – |
| Vincent | 6 | – | 1 | 3 | 2 |
| Sherpa | 7 | – | 7 | – | – |
| A Pigeon Sat on a Branch… | 8 | 2 | 5 | 1 | – |
| Tehran Taxi | 8 | 5 | 3 | – | – |
| Black Souls | 5 | – | 3 | 2 | – |
| Victoria | 6 | 1 | 4 | 1 | – |
| Tales | 3 | – | 3 | – | – |
| Tangerine | 11 | 2 | 9 | – | – |
| Me and Earl and the Dying Girl | 6 | – | – | 6 | – |
| Arabian Nights | 10 | 4 | 5 | 1 | – |
Awards
Since this year we had over 100 reviews and the viewing of our writers was so varied, we’re unable to provide singular picks for all of the best elements of the festival, due to a lack of consensus. As a result, we have asked writers to propose films worthy of these awards, and have included them here. Note: awards listed “consensus” require 2 or more writers to have seen and rated the film.
Consensus – Best Film of the Official Competition: Tehran Taxi, dir. Jafar Panahi – IRAN
“Cinema and audience empathy can be created out of nothing, and his ability to draw stories in these circumstances proves the power of pure storytelling in the face of restrictions and limitations in a way the Dogme 95 movement never did.” – Review by Brad Mariano
Consensus – Features That Deserved a Competition Berth:
Pasolini, dir. Abel Ferrara – USA
“Like any Pasolini film, the premise sounds goofy on paper, but Ferrara stages these scenes with a sense of awe and satire reminiscent of the master’s best works.” – Review by Brad Mariano
Court, dir. Chaitanya Tamhane – INDIA
“However, it would be a gross injustice to relegate Court to the status of a simple legal drama because it’s so much more than that. It captures the incessantly bleak realities of class structures and social hierarchy in India in a manner that no film has done before.” – Review by Virat Nehru
Consensus – Best of the Rest:
Cemetery of Splendour, dir. Apichatpong Weerasethakul – THAILAND
“Cemetery of Splendour is a phenomenal meditation on memory, dreaming, and love. It transforms Khon Kaen into a subtle dreamscape, where every supernatural occurrence is brought in with Weerasethakul’s careful and intricate style of directing” – Review by Jeremy Elphick
The Assassin, dir. Hou Hsiao-Hsien – CHINA
“Led by characters who observe their own silence, The Assassin visually articulates the wordless sense of cultural loss that motivates the appeal of wuxia for Chinese audiences.” – Review by Mei Chew
Consensus – Best Documentaries of the Festival:
Beats of the Antonov, dir. hajooj kuka – SUDAN
“This pain is carefully documented by kuka, in a way that neither fetishises or delegitimises it, but recognises it as part of a broad spectrum of the Sudanese experience; deeply complex, nuanced and multi-faceted, tragic and celebratory.” – Review by Jeremy Elphick
Welcome to Leith, dir. Michael Beach Nichols & Christopher K. Walker – USA
“It is ostensibly a film about ideological conflicts but it manages to also tell a story of civil liberties, family, journalism and the law, and in that Nichols and Walker have made one of the most surprising, and likely one of the best, documentaries of the year, let alone the festival.” – Review by Conor Bateman
The Look of Silence, dir. Joshua Oppenheimer – INDONESIA/DENMARK/NORWAY/FINLAND/UK
“As a companion piece, Oppenheimer’s film is a masterpiece – not simply in the way it relates to the content of The Act of Killing, but also in the way it forces the audience to question and reevaluate the assumptions and sympathies they developed throughout.” – Review by Jeremy Elphick
Best Freak Me Out Feature: The Invitation, dir. Karyn Kusama – USA
“This is what sets Kusama’s Invitation apart from other indie horror films we’ve seen over the past few years – she is not trying to pay homage to cinema of the past, nor is she trying to make a straight forward horror flick; she wants to challenge her audience and displace their expectations” – Review by Felix Hubble
Best Destruction Cinema Film: Deux Fois, dir. Jackie Raynal – FRANCE
“Chris Fujiwara introduced Deux Fois as a remembrance by director Jackie Raynal of when she and her crew were “20 and free”, and it’s “free” that interests me the most. Largely free of sound, perhaps, or free of a neatly summative structure, or free of editing conventions that demand they choose only one take or cut away when we get the point, but it’s all an immaculately maculate representation of cautious, frustrated youth.” – Dominic Barlow
Best Acting Performances:
Willem Dafoe, Pasolini
“Dafoe doesn’t just wear [Pasolini’s] clothes but his thoughts, ideas, expressions; getting into his skin in one of the finest performances of the year.” – Review by Brad Mariano
Ewen Leslie, The Daughter
“…it’s Ewen Leslie’s working class but sensitive and intelligent Oliver who gives one of the most amazingly emotive yet believable performances. He builds up Oliver subtly and slowly, letting the character unfold to us in the most banal and familiar way possible so that when his eventual traumatic breakdown occurs we break along with him.” – Review by Saro Lusty-Cavallari
Chiara D’Anna and Sidse Babett Knudsen, The Duke of Burgundy
“Not well known to English audiences, both deliver stunning performances in what amount to dual roles as so much of the film involves this roleplaying exercise to which one of them demands absolute perfectionism.” – Review by Brad Mariano
Best Cinematography:
Marius Panduru, Aferim!
“The dialled-up high contrast monochrome of Marius Panduru’s cinematography serves to evoke not only the classic Westerns from which it borrows, but also the decidedly more austere Eastern European and Soviet historical dramas of the Sixties.” – Review by Jake Moody
Sturla Brandth Grøvlen, Victoria
“It’s no wonder that the first name that appears in the end credits is that of cinematographer Sturla Brandth Grøvlen, who has done an incredible job in not only vividly realising this sense of motion, both as microcosm and macrocosm, but also in actually framing so many wonderful standalone shots” – Review by Conor Bateman
Best Musical Score: Nils Frahm, Victoria
“Also noteworthy is the film’s score, provided by German minimalist composer Nils Frahm which, although used too sparingly, does make for some very impressive sequences, including a club scene in the film’s second half, in which Frahm’s music creates this tonal dissonance with the frenetic celebrations of those inside” – Review by Conor Bateman
Special mention: Atticus Ross’ sound mixing in Love & Mercy
Special Prizes
Most Divisive Film: Hill of Freedom (2 HR, 1 R, 2 SNR)
Best Sudden Genre Shift: Haemoo (tense drama to brutal thriller), Arabian Nights Vol. 3 (fantastical epic to bird documentary)
Best Singular Shot: Cemetery of Splendour (the escalator shot), Tehran Taxi (opening long take), Victoria (the whole film).
Best Use of Music (the honorary Pretty Girl Rock award): “Calling Occupants of Interplanetary Craft” by The Carpenters in Arabian Nights Vols. 2 and 3
Best Musical Sequence: The Forbidden Room (“The Final Derierre”), A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence (the Limping Lotta sequence).
Worst Cameo: [redacted], She’s Funny That Way
Least Realistic Male Genitalia: Aferim!, Cemetery of Splendour, Arabian Nights Vol. 2, Eisenstein in Guanajuato
Worst Scheduling Clash: Arabian Nights and the Destruction Cinema retrospective
Short Films Better Than The Features They Preceded: Pop-up Porno: M4M (better than The Smell Of Us), Saturday (better than The Goob), The Face of Ukraine (better than The Russian Woodpecker)
Interviews (18)
- Richard Kuipers and Alex-Heller Nicholas, SFF Freak Me Out Programmer and Writer/Critic: (Part One) + (Part Two)
- Kim Farrant, Director of Strangerland
- hajooj kuka, Director of Beats of the Antonov
- Michael Beach Nichols and Christopher K. Walker, Directors of Welcome to Leith
- François Verster, Director of The Dream of Shahrazad
- István Borbás, Cinematographer of A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence
- Sean Baker, Writer/Director of Tangerine
- Chris Fujiwara, SFF Destruction Cinema Programmer
- Simon Stone, Writer/Director of The Daughter
- Ramin Bahrani, Writer/Director of 99 Homes
- Partho Sen-Gupta, Director of, and Adil Hussain, Actor in Sunrise
- Sepideh Farsi, Director of Red Rose
- Jan Chapman and Nicole O’Donohue, Co-Producers of The Daughter
- Rakhshan Bani-Etemad, Writer/Director of Tales
- Laurent Bécue-Renard, Director of Of Men and War
- Ryūichi Hiroki, Director of Kabukicho Love Hotel
- Luke Meyer, Director of Breaking A Monster
- Sibs Shongwe-La Mer, Writer/Director of Necktie Youth
Other Coverage
Reviews (110)
* = review from a previous festival