What: The Surrogate When & how much: There are no further screenings of this film scheduled during the Adelaide Film Festival, but keep an eye out for other festivals or a wider release **This review contains some spoilers for The Surrogate (2020)** In my early undergraduate years, I wrote a research essay on gestational surrogacy for a summer school class on human rights. Wading through … Continue reading Adelaide Film Festival 2020: The Surrogate
Director: Michael Bentham 2019 Australia 84 minutes More info here. Disclosure takes place over a single afternoon, poolside at a beautiful villa somewhere in the Victorian countryside. What starts as a friendly if dull exchange between two 40-something Aussie couples quickly descends into a heated and tense confrontation. Based on a true story, Disclosure follows two sets of parents as they try to navigate the … Continue reading Adelaide Film Festival 2020: Disclosure
Director: Mariusz Wilczyński 2019 Poland 88 minutes Further information: Adelaide Film Festival website (no further sessions), the film’s website Kill It and Leave this Town is sombre, grotesque, nightmarish… and yet a surprisingly relatable, human story of one man’s nostalgia for the Polish city of his childhood, and his regret at not making the most of his time with his parents and best friend while … Continue reading Adelaide Film Festival 2020: Kill It and Leave This Town
What: Firestarter – The Story of Bangarra When: 24 October 8.45pm, 25 October 4.40pm (sold out), 29 October 6.00pm How much: see Adelaide Film Festival website for details Cultural advisory: this review contains references to Aboriginal people who have passed away. “Using our artform as our weapons is the way we have to fight.” – David Page Bangarra is a Wiradjuri word meaning ‘making fire’. … Continue reading Adelaide Film Festival 2020: Firestarter
If February-and-March-Milly knew that she was about to head into an open expanse time of which I had to fill with my own activities, she wouldn’t have predicted she’d cut 30cm off her hair, or appreciate Robert Pattinson’s lockdown cursed microwaved pasta recipe, but here we are. With *fingers crossed* the worst of lockdown ending, and the gradual re-opening of our old favourite haunts, we’re now … Continue reading Random Recommendations from Quarantine
Who: Written and directed by Hlynur Pálmason What: A White, White Day (part of the Scandinavian Film Festival 2019) When: 17 July – 7 August (Adelaide), see website for session times. Where: Place Nova Eastend and Prospect Cinemas View an extract from the film. A White, White Day is the centrepiece of this year’s Scandinavian Film Festival, with lead Ingvar E. Sigurdsson having won Best … Continue reading Scandinavian Film Festival 2019 Review: A White, White Day
The erotic-surrealist French film Un couteau dans le Coeur (Knife + Heart in English) is a love letter from director Yann Gonzalez to the high-art 35mm European porn of the 1970s. This homage to the quaint and pastoral production of the gay porn of yore is streaked with a darker, and more seditious “plot” – if it can be termed even that. When Anne (Vanessa … Continue reading Adelaide Film Festival 2018: Knife + Heart
Watch the trailer here. Prior to the introduction of the film rating system in 1971, the Australian Censorship Board was responsible for cutting thousands of scenes from films brought into Australia to be screened. Purportedly rendering them appropriate for audiences ‘of a friendly nation’, this practise resulted in one of the harshest censorship systems in the Western world. Filmmaker Sari Braithwaite spent years sifting through … Continue reading Adelaide Film Festival 2018: [CENSORED]
Is family something you are born into, or something you choose? Hirokazu Kore-eda asks this age old question in his 2018 Shoplifters. Hot off the heels of its Palm d’Or from Cannes and its Audience Choice Award at Vancouver Film Festival, Shoplifters has arrived in Adelaide to punch you in the stomach and make you crave instant ramen and croquettes. Osamu (Lily Franky) is the patriarch of a family of misfits. … Continue reading Adelaide Film Festival 2018: Shoplifters
I’ve always been drawn to animated films; they seem to captivate and comfort me in a distinctive way. I find myself admiring the craftsmanship behind the handmade figurines or frames of any medium, and noticing how animated works evoke dimensions of emotion in me that live action can’t quite capture. The Animated Shorts collection of this year’s Adelaide Film Festival brought together 11 new short … Continue reading Adelaide Film Festival 2018: Animated Shorts
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