Festival Programme

Films by Strand

Widescreen

A panorama of the best and brightest films that drew our attention on the world stage during our intense engagement with international cinema on the festival circuit this year.

We’ve had an incredibly wide palette to choose from this year, not the least is the selection from Cannes Film Festival, yielding some of our most exciting choices in the frantic week before we closed our schedule.

Àma Gloria

Marie Amachoukeli

The special bond between a little French girl and her African nanny is tested during a last summer.

Blue Jean

Georgia Oakley

A closeted PE teacher living in Thatcher’s Britain strives to keep her work and private lives separate, but when a new pupil sees her on a night out, she must reckon with how she chooses to live her life as a queer woman.

Carmen

Benjamin Millepied

Sensual and simmering with tension, Black Swan and Dune choreographer Benjamin Millepied’s debut feature reimagines classic opera Carmen for the modern era, a musical drama set in the hotbed of the America–Mexico border.

Charcoal

Carvão

Carolina Markowicz

An appealingly twisted crime-thriller in which a poor rural family agree to a diabolical deal to shelter an Argentinian drug lord. This Brazilian debut feature delivers a wry, politically astute domestic psychodrama.

Disco Boy

Giacomo Abbruzzese

Franz Rogowski (Great Freedom, Transit) is thrilling as a foreign legionnaire fighting demons on the battlefront and urges on the dance floor in Giacomo Abbruzzese’s striking debut feature.

Fremont

Babak Jalali

This deadpan delight from Iranian filmmaker Babak Jalali stars real-life Afghan refugee Anaita Wali Zada as a new US immigrant finding her place the eponymous Bay Area city. Also featuring comedian Gregg Turkington and The Bear breakout Jeremy Allen White.

GAGA

Ha-yong jia

Laha Mebow

After the death of their patriarch, a multigenerational Indigenous Taiwanese family must come together to retain their connection to their ancient culture against encroaching challenges in this moving award-winner.

Holy Spider

Ali Abbasi

A profoundly disturbing crime thriller about the so-called Spider Killer who terrorised sex workers in Iran and the lone journalist who strives for justice in a thoroughly misogynistic society.

I Like Movies

Chandler Levack

Love-letters to cinema are a dime a dozen, but not many can lay claim to having the heart and humour of Chandler Levack’s nostalgic, charming debut.

If Only I Could Hibernate

Baavgai bolohson

Zoljargal Purevdash

In this first Mongolian Official Selection at Cannes, a teenage boy dreams of winning a scholarship in a national physics competition but his hopes are jeopardized when his mother leaves him to care for his siblings alone.

Inshallah a Boy

Inshallah walad

Amjad Al Rasheed

The injustices of a patriarchal power system are laid bare in this Jordanian debut as a widow takes drastic measures in order to avoid losing her home and inheritance to her in-laws because she hasn’t conceived a son.

Inside

Vasilis Katsoupis

Willem Dafoe plays a thief trapped alone inside a luxury Manhattan apartment with a hi-tech security system and an invaluable art collection in this ingenious and incredibly immersive survival thriller.

The Inspection

Elegance Bratton

Based on a true story, The Inspection follows a young US Marine from his life on the streets to his rise within the armed forces, all the while searching for his mother’s love and acceptance.

Lost Love

Lau soey lok faa

Ka Sing-Fung

After losing their own child, a married couple become foster parents, healing from their own grief and rediscovering parenthood in this deeply moving, award-winning debut.

L’immensità

Emanuele Crialese

Penélope Cruz delivers retro-glamour in this gorgeous 70-set Italian melodrama, starring as a wife in a failing marriage and the mother of three children, the eldest of which is questioning their sexual identity.

Midwives

Sages-femmes

Léa Fehner

Two rookie midwives are thrown into the deep end in a chaotic, underfunded and understaffed maternity ward in director Léa Fehner’s compassionate French drama of triumph over adversity.

Of an Age

Goran Stolevski

Goran Stolevski’s tender sophomore film is equal parts coming-of-age and coming-out story, as much a commentary on the pressures of masculinity and heteronormativity as it is a witty, sentimental romance set against the backdrop of turn-of-the-twentieth-century Melbourne.

Only the River Flows

He bian de cuo wu

Wei Shujun

This stylish neo noir from upcoming Chinese director Wei Shujun finds a long-suffering detective questioning his methods and eventually his mind after a series of mysterious murders in a small rural town.

Paris Memories

Revoir Paris

Alice Winocour

Three months after surviving a terror attack in a Paris bistro, translator Mia retraces her steps in an effort to disentangle her fragmented memories of that traumatic night in Alice Winocur’s incisive portrait of survival.

Passages

Ira Sachs

A gay couple’s marriage spirals into chaos when one of them begins an affair with a younger woman in Ira Sach’s seductive and bitterly amusing Paris-set drama. Starring Franz Rogowski, Ben Whishaw and Adèle Exarchopoulos.

Phantom

Yuryeong

Lee Hae-young

Set in Japanese-occupied Korea in 1933, five people are held captive by a security chief determined to find the spy “Phantom” in this stylish, highly entertaining thriller.

Plan 75

Hayakawa Chie

This quietly devastating debut depicts a dystopian near-future Japan where the government implements a programme of voluntary euthanasia for those over 75 as the solution for a rapidly aging population.

Radical

Christopher Zalla

This rousing crowdpleaser starring Eugenio Derbez (CODA) as a Mexican teacher who thinks outside the box picked up the top Audience Award at this year’s Sundance film festival.

Reality

Tina Satter

Anchored by a remarkable performance from Sydney Sweeney, Reality reconstructs the interrogation and arrest of American whistleblower Reality Winner in real-time, to disturbing, pulse-pounding effect.

Riceboy Sleeps

Anthony Shim

A Korean single mother immigrates to Canada with her young son in the 1990s and must navigate the challenges of motherhood and adapting to a new world in this poignant award-winning coming of age drama.

Saint Omer

Alice Diop

Drawing on a tragic true event, this multi-awarded and mesmerising, stately courtroom drama upends notions of race, cultural heritage, class and female agency, and the mythologies and social prejudices underpinning received ideas.

Sanctuary

Zachary Wigon

Set over one night in one hotel room, this psychosexual thriller–cum-romantic comedy charts the ever-shifting power plays between a wealthy heir and his long-time dominatrix.

The Settlers

Los colonos

Felipe Galvez

Set in on the remote frontier in early 20th-century Chile, first-time filmmaker Felipe Gálvez’s exhilarating and provocative revisionist Western takes a sidelong glance at Chile’s dark colonial past.

Sorcery

Brujería

Christopher Murray

An Indigenous girl seeks revenge for her father’s death and finds solace in a secret cabal of witches. This enigmatic folktale of supernatural resistance provides a haunting portrayal of Chile’s colonial past.