A fantastic line-up of documentaries will be screening at this year’s Sydney Film Festival. From all around the globe, covering a remarkably diverse range of topics – there’s sure to be something for every factual film lover.
The festival opens this year with a documentary, and from a quick scan through the archives, it’s clear this doesn’t happen very often! This is the first time a non-fiction film has opened the festival since That’s Entertainment III! in 1994. We Don’t Need a Map is a very different proposition: Warwick Thornton’s inventive, anarchic and surprisingly funny film explores Australia’s relationship to the Southern Cross.
Also screening at the grand old State Theatre is Raoul Peck’s Oscar-nominated I Am Not Your Negro. Peck’s masterwork will also screen at the latest addition to the festival venue line-up, The Ritz Cinema in Randwick on 17 June (but hurry, tickets are selling fast!).
Festivalgoers can enjoy some fine documentaries at the State Theatre: Waiting for Giraffes and Michael Glawogger’s Untitled (8 June); School Life (9 June, screening in the Europe! Voices of Women in Film program); Sundance Grand Jury Prize winner, Last Men in Aleppo (10 June); the world premiere of Gaylene Preston’s My Year with Helen (10 June), featuring former New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark; the latest from Steve ‘Hoop Dreams‘ James, Abacus: Small Enough to Jail (11 June); and the world premiere of Australian enviro-documentary Blue (pictured above, 11 June).
The following week brings Oscar-nominated I Am Not Your Negro (12 June); a second title from our European women filmmakers program, Ama-San (pictured above, 13 June); Erica Glynn’s inspiring new Australian documentary In My Own Words (14 June); from the Philippines, Sundance winner, Motherland; Tom Zubrycki’s Hope Road (15 June); and Indian documentary An Insignificant Man featuring ‘The Bernie Sanders of India’ (16 June).
And on the festival’s final weekend there is Vanessa Redgrave’s directorial debut, straight from Cannes, Sea Sorrow (17 June); Jennifer Peedom’s Mountain (17 June); The Farthest (18 June), an epic look at the Voyager space program; and Roger Donaldson’s captivating McLaren (pictured above, 18 June), a Senna-like portrait of Bruce McLaren – not just for fans of four wheeled activities!
And that’s just the State Theatre! Many more great titles by filmmaking stalwarts and newbies can be found at Event Cinemas George Street, Hayden Orpheum Picture Palace Cremorne, Dendy Opera Quays and Dendy Newtown. Don’t miss the wonderful line-up of Australian talent on display in this year’s Documentary Australia Foundation competition for Best Australian Documentary, or our free meet-the-filmmaker discussions with Vanessa Redgrave, Gaylene Preston, Warwick Thornton, Hebért Peck (producer of I Am Not Your Negro) and others – details on SFF’s website
