Festival Programme

Films by Strand

Framing Reality

The profusion of excellent documentaries available to us is staggering and we’ve found these gems tackling topics as varied as the history of film, travel to Mars, and a fascinating look inside the human body.

See also Ms Information, Building Bridges: Bill Youren’s Vision of Peace, King Loser, Grant Sheehan: Light, Ghosts & Dreams, Red Mole: A Romance, Kokomo City, The Tuba Thieves and the Political States, Music and Portrait of an Artist collections.

Billion Dollar Heist

Daniel Gordon

A deep-dive into the audacious attempt by a trans-global criminal organisation to steal a billion dollars from the Bangladesh Central Bank, highlighting the vulnerability of even the world’s biggest corporations in cyberspace.

Brainwashed: Sex-Camera-Power

Nina Menkes

An eye-opening work which may change the way you look at movies, Nina Menkes’ documentary essay uses footage from hundreds of films to deconstruct and re-examine the male gaze in cinema.

Casa Susanna

Sébastien Lifshitz

French documentarian Sébastien Lifshitz's poignant story about trans lives across time. Casa Susanna was a bungalow refuge for cross-dressing men in the 1960s, where they were free to be themselves.

De Humani Corporis Fabrica

Véréna Paravel, Lucien Castaing-Taylor

Visionary and confrontational, the mysteries of the body are dissected with surgical precision in an unforgettable, extremely close-up look at human bodies, those who care for them, and the system that rules them all.

The Eternal Memory

La memoria infinita

Maite Alberdi

Oscar-nominated Chilean filmmaker Maite Alberdi documents a love story for the ages as a woman struggles to preserve the brilliant mind of her partner of 25 years who has been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s.

Fantastic Machine

Axel Danielson, Maximilien Van Aertryck

Leaping between Georges Méliès, Leni Riefenstahl, Ted Turner, YouTubers, and the Earth as a pale blue dot, this fascinating, foreboding documentary examines the world as we see it—and ourselves within it—through photography.

The Giants

Laurence Billiet, Rachael Antony

Interweaving the inspirational activism of Australian Greens co-founder Bob Brown with the stories of the ancient trees he is fighting to save, this environmental documentary is a rousing call to action.

Is There Anybody Out There?

Ella Glendining

A disabled filmmaker sets out to find someone with a body just like hers, while painting a deeply authentic portrait of what it means to live a proudly disabled life in an ableist world.

Kim's Video

David Redmon, Ashley Sabin

Part personal video essay, part documentary, part creative intervention, Kim's Video charts the rise, the fall and the relocation of a New York video store improbably transplanted into the heart of Mafia country.

Orlando, My Political Biography

Orlando, ma biographie politique

Paul B. Preciado

Documentary, film essay, biography and performance piece meld together in Paul B. Preciado’s avant-garde, ruffed reclamation of Virginia Woolf’s Orlando. This award-winning exploration of trans lives re-imagines the past and asks who are in the present.

Pictures of Ghosts

Retratos fantasmas

Kleber Mendonça Filho

Festival fave Kleber Mendonça Filho delivers a delightful cinematic love letter to his childhood home in Recife, the many old picture houses he used to frequent downtown and his lifelong passion for film.

Pray for Our Sinners

Sinéad O'Shea

Journalist Sinéad O’Shea delivers a powerful portrait of those who resisted the Catholic Church’s historic abuse of women and children in small-town Ireland ranging from corporal punishment and oppressive mother-and-baby homes.

Smoke Sauna Sisterhood

 Anna Hints

This Sundance award winner brings new meaning to the healing powers of sisterhood, following a group of Estonian women who gather in a traditional log-cabin sauna to share naked truths.

Space: The Longest Goodbye

The Longest Goodbye

Ido Mizrahy

An absorbing look at the modern-day realities of space travel that goes beyond the nuts and bolts to probe the most unpredictable element of cosmic exploration: the vulnerability of the human mind.

Subject

Jennifer Tiexiera, Camilla Hall

The subjects of famous documentaries (The Staircase, Hoop Dreams, Capturing the Friedmans) talk about how the experience changed their lives—for better and worse.