Sydney Film Fest. 2026

 

Time was that the Sydney Film Festival was the high point of a local movie freak's year. Now it's in there with Vivid, the footy, David Jones' windows at Xmas and all the other things that flutter on lamp posts, to remind us we're still living in Sydney. I cherry-picked the festival, which is not the best use of it. Their most valuable offerings have usually been surprises. I was looking at the few efforts of familiar names. It may be that a new generation of Akira Kurosawas, Andrej Wadjas and Helmut Käutners are being revealed in these hundreds of movies playing in sixteen venues but I haven't found them and the thought of the cost and effort involved in checking has sent me scurrying back to S.B.S., foreign streaming services, and the local national events, which appear to have a higher strike rate. 

Remake takes us back into the life of documentary filmmaker Ross McElwee fifteen years after we last heard from him.  We feel we know McElwee from his autobiographical movies, which first reached The Sydney Film Festival with the jokey 1985 Sherman’s March, where Mc Elwee had parlayed his short film experience into making an educational feature about the U.S. Civil war General and his notorious March to the Sea campaign. Making that production strayed into McElwee’s family, friends, love interests and a joke rivalry with Burt Reynolds (and an imitator) all presenting McElwee as an innocent lost in a sea of Marxist documentarians, who made him feel like Ferdinand the Bull (“He never learned how to fight”).

This bait and switch method continued with his 2003 Bright Leaves charting McElwee’s family’s history in the Tobacco industry, diverting into an examination of Michael Curtiz’s 1950 tobacco themed Bright Leaf, complete with an interview with star Patricia Neal, where McElwee wanted to see his grandfather represented as the Gary Cooper character as but is faced with the daunting discovery that he is closer to villain Donald Crisp. In the new film, we continue with an exposition declaring that a Hollywood producer with an eight-sheet poster of Kitten With a Whip (Ann-Margaret prominent) on his office wall, wants to do a dramatised  Sherman’s March, a project which, during this new documentay, will metamorphose into a TV series and an opera, with performers live lip-syncing projected clips of McElwee’s friends and family in song. We get clips of his 2011 In Paraguay about the delay in his adopting his foreign daughter (compare Tavernier’s Holy Lola) and 2008 Photographic Memory with arguments about the ascent of video with his by then fellow-filmmaker son Adrian, whose impressive snow sport material is glimpsed.

 But now, unlike his other films, real life obliterates this jokey material. McElwee’s marriage has disintegrated and he’s paired with another filmmaker, who won’t let him put her in his movies, raising the question of the effect on their real lives of public show. Overshadowing this and any other questions (familiar long-time mentor and subject Charleen Swansea has now died, with memory loss of her participations) is Adrian’s substance abuse. 

You can feel the audience suddenly go quiet when we become aware of his unfolding tragedy. We see OxyContin leading to Heroin and finally fatal use of Fentanyl. The younger McElee’s description of the allure and destructive effect of drug use is one of the most disturbing accounts we have, made even more stark against his jokey demonstration of vaping.

 

Remake -McElwee, father& son.

Mc Elwee, who we saw as belonging to the tradition of Woody Allen, suddenly becomes a tragic figure trying to use his craft to exorcise personal pain. Whether this is a subject for public entertainment becomes questionable. That is, I guess, the point of the film and something McElwee is trying to work out by its production. These are not scripted characters and those of us who have followed them down the years, even at this distance, cannot be unmoved.

Michael (A Quiet Place:Day One) Sarnovski’s The Death of Robin Hood is one of those current, grubby interrogations of traditional British culture, along with Mirrah Foulkes’ Judy and Punch and (better) Chloé Zhao’s Hamnet.  We’ve been over this ground before. Another batch of British self rejections - Room at the Top, This Sporting Life, It Happened Here I'll Never Forget Whats'isname & If - contained Robin and Marian but a weathered Sean Connery seemed positively amiable by comparison to Hugh Jackman submerged in matted grey hair and Pamela S. Westmore’s prosthetics. He’s first seen cutting the throat of a teenage girl, after telling her Marian only existed in the stories and giving pointers for her stalking him.

Plot has Bill Skarsgård’s Little John, now gone all Martin Guerre, taking over the life of a dead farmer and needing Robin’s aid in defending it from the man’s family. “We can best them.” This is one of those period pieces where the big action set piece is at the start. Jackman emerges barely alive, with young Faith Delaney. Ah, but there is an island of compassion in all this brutality. Abbess Jodie Comer runs an isolated hill-top Priory on a Druid site and, given sanctuary there, he slowly recovers. The sun even comes out. Delaney watches his foraging skills and he shows her how to fashion a bow out of a tree trunk. There’s even such a nice leper looking after them. Happiness and redemption lie outside the murky scheme of this film but there is space for revenge, as Jackman warns recovering Noah Jupe, after rowing him out of earshot. Soon, the carved face at the bottom of the sculpted flask is obscured, as it fills with human blood.

            The Death ofRobin Hood - Jodie Comer, Faith Delaney & Hugh Jackman.

The menacing imagery is convincing, the playing is superior and the writing defeats anticipation but you have to demand whether something so grim is viable popular entertainment. It has already opened theatrically and we can only think that it was in a film festival in the of hope of an endorsement as art.  As for the admirable Jodie Comer, she’s already done two of these and if she doesn’t get herself into one about singing and dancing Chelsea debs. fast, she’s going to have a fan base that expects to see a lovable bunny rabbit quivering as the lead stomps it, every picture.

Clara Law arrived at the end of the years of prominence for Hong Hong Kong cinema, making a few quirky main stream features -  1989’s Pan Jin Lian zhi qian shi jin sheng/ The Reincarnation of Golden Lotus, the 1990 Farewell China / Ai zai bie xiang de ji jie (particularly interesting) & 1993’s You Seng/Temptation for a Monk with the memorable scene of shaving Joan Shen’s head, all before the take-over sent Law and long time writer partner Eddie Fong fleeing not to the U.S. with Chau Yun Fat, Sammo Hung and Tsui Hark but to throw in her lot with the Australian film industry - always a suspect move - though she did manage to get off a few nonconformist features here. She was always an outlier, not that Chinese women movie directors were ever thick on the ground,

 Ripples in the Mist - Law

Interesting to find the pair still active in 2026 with her new Ripples in the Mist in the Film Festival, and her clutching one of the film’s balloon-folder elephants in place of a bouquet.

They described this one as their “D.I.Y.” feature. Dissatisfied with the previous constraints of producer control, they put the film together with their own resources and the contributions of well-wishers. “We did not expect to get any money back.”

I’d offer a synopsis but I found it too hard to follow to try that. The action moves between Australia and Taiwan, as a Chinese student tries to trace her friend who fled the territory after the crackdown. Simultaneous with her questioning people they had known, we get her studies of contemporary ballet (an imposing single take coverage with the camera in among the dancers) and Buddhists, like the Australian employer who was determined to treat the temporary visa holders he was giving jobs fairly, where they were often exploited by others. A single mother Canadian artist, who knew the friend, offers our heroine shelter in her country studio.

This fragmentary coverage sketches topics we don’t often see -   the Chinese diaspora, Australia as a not always welcoming destination, Hong Kong violence against protesters. One of the most striking passages is one girl describing not being able to run fast enough to get away from troops and finding herself completely blue after being sprayed with riot control foam. The unfamiliar players are effective and individual. Placing them in recognisably Australian settings gives the film an unfamiliar conviction.

The imagery and performance can not be faulted but the sequence of events and the part the actors play in them, I repeatedly found confusing. I spent too much of my time trying to figure that out to absorb this one’s many qualities. It is a serious attempt by the makers to give responsible use to their skills and it deserves respect for that. It will be interesting to see how far it gets.

By contrast, both conventional and surprising, Nika & Madison, the Canadian Scope medium budgeter delivers its activist material in the shape of a manhunt action melodrama. This one is more mainstream than the other titles I caught.

We start off with Ellyn Jade/Nika on the Lone Spruce reservation, taking a bead on an appealing deer (cruelty to animals is big this year) Cut to her dressing the hide. Driving past, friend Dylan Cook asks “Did you shoot that?” and gets told, “No, I ordered it from Amazon.” Already, they have our attention.

Her more animated cousin, Star Slade/Madison is studying in Toronto. They used to be close but drifted apart. When Slade is partying in a city bar and moves on a drinker, his lady friend gets agro and David Reale, the cop who is called to stop their fight, has Slade sit in the back of the police van - to take her home.  Jade, who has been alerted to the fact that her cousin is in trouble, tracks her mobile phone. About now, we get the alarming stats on indigenous incarceration.

 When Slade wants to pee in a deserted warehouse area, Reale turns rapist and is only halted when Jade takes him down with a shovel. The girls make off after calling in the injury on his radio. Billy Merasty/their Uncle George, imposing with traditional Indian plats, is the one nervously keeping his head and, when they learn that the cop is in hospital and the force is looking for the girls, he stops Jade from taking her rifle when she decides to head off into the bush. “You know how to trap and forage. I want to keep guns out of this.”

In town, newly arrived detective Amanda Brugel is cautioned by partner Shawn Doyle that the officer in hospital is a good guy with a family and she should remember that people in the force have long memories. One of the film’s best scenes comes where the Toronto cops are denied entry to the Reservation by the Indigenous Police, who have set up a roadblock to catch drug dealers operating there, both groups uneasy about asserting their authority.

Meanwhile, the girls have made themselves at home in a caravan trailer abandoned in remote bush, which Jade has made into her favourite place. We learn about the childhood molestation which has turned her into a recluse, while the other girl has embraced the city, scornful of her friend getting no further than suburban Brampton. Jade arrives with a fish impaled on a twig to go with wild mushrooms, (twentyfive dollars a kilo in the supermarket) for their breakfast. This is all a bit too schematic, complete with balancing bush and urban montages.

However Reale has come out of his coma and accused the girls and Brugel, tamping down her hostile partner, has gone back to the reservation, assuring the locals that they only want to talk to people there. They are not doing too well till mean neighbor Pamela Matthews identifies the ‘phonecam. image of Slade and indicates the direction she saw the girls leave. It’s time to go in with tracker dog and a helicopter. The cousins recognise that the jig is up and resolve to turn themselves in - but only after a night on the town in Slade’s party outfits. They also drop by the hospital to intimidate Reale. Everybody gets lawyered up and the film is none too sympathetic to the Police Union rep. 

The likeable leads, unfamiliar setting and smooth, conventional filming all make this OK viewing. It will be interesting to see what these people do next.

 

 That lot is not bad going, even at those prices - along with a Brazilian retro. which Kleber Mendonça Filho brought in person. I plan including that in a longer Brazilian piece. 

Barrie Pattison 2026

Frennch Film Festival 2026

I wasn't able to do justice to this year's French Film Festival, which is a pity. I usually enjoy those. However, I have caught up with a couple of entries

Cédric Jimenez' Chien 51 / Dog 51 proved to be a frog A-feature entry in the Blade Runner, Children of Men, Edge of Tomorrow line.

They start as they mean to go, with a metallic clang in the music track and a homeless mob herded at the crossing between residential zones of 2045 Paris. Significantly, black drones hover. Pretty soon a shooting in his flat courtyard takes out the inventor of the police force’s new super tool Alma, the computer that does ultra-accurate hypertheticals on crimes.

Scruffy, down-graded cop Gilles Lellouche is called into HQ, saying “two sugars” to younger female superior Adèle Exarchopoulos from Blue is the Warmest Colour, who has him on the carpet without offering coffee.

Jiminez (Bac-nord, November) has marked his territory with these. Lots of racing along motorways in the rain at night. Grisled Lelouche just about gets by as an action hero, diving off a Seine bridge to go frogman in the city sewers and bending the rules to look after charity worker Valeria Bruni-Tedeschi. As with Edge of Tomorrow the best scene, which comes towards the end here, is Exarchopoulos’ corridor shootout with a couple of drones.

Dog 51 - Exarchopoulos

The elements are uneven. A popcorn movie, albeit a distopic European one, doesn’t benefit from such a grim ending. Putting  up a subservient, incapable authority structure headed up by celebrity support actors -  Louis Garrel, Romain Duris, Artus - plays less well than setting it in a grimy, rubbish-strewn concrete underground Paris, where Lellouche surfaces from his sewer dive to see the Eiffel Tower still in place, across the moonlit Seine, reminding him how beautiful it used to be, the film’s best moment.

Craftsmanship and performances could sustain a better film.

The talking point on Vie Privée/Private Life is that we get Jodie Foster speaking French, dropping in the odd English phrase. As with the Robert Wise West Side Story, the first word on the track is “Shit!” Jodie gets one English-language scene with documentary maker Frederick Wiseman, who plays her former mentor. Supporting her, we get French-speaking celebrities, who don’t have their normal share of the action. Virginie Efira is particularly underused, just manifesting as glamorous in flashbacks.

Jodie is a Paris-based psychiatrist whose patient, Virginie, is murdered and the resentful husband, Mathieu Amalric, throws Jodie out of the Jewish funeral. How does this involve Aunt Aurore Clement’s will? It all gets mixed in with Comédie Française actor Noam Morgensztern, as another patient. His years of therapy for a smoking habit were less productive than one visit to hypnotist Sophie Guillemin. Meanwhile, Jodie has family encounters with amorous optometrist ex-husband Dan Auteuil, (he helps her steal Amazon deliveries) and supper with son Vincent Lacoste and his wife Park Ji-min (Return to Seoul/Retour à Séoul) - good cast punching below their weight.

 Zlotowski

Jodie’s career as a Freudian is central. The gendarmes she complains to exchange smirks and she begins to have her own doubts. Throw in a scarlet dream sequence with a symphony orchestra and Nazis. This is all largely tongue in cheek but the film has a disturbing moment worthy of a top-line film noir, as Jodie climbs her apartment block stairs and hears the lost mini-disk of the session with her dead patient, playing in her apartment.

In the line of The Lady in the Car With the Glasses & the Gun, this one is more interesting before it all gets explained. Vie Privée is also a companion piece to  writer-director Rebecca Zlotowski’s Les enfants des autres and Planetarium, again having celebrity leads front up uneven dramas, but this one is better than those.

The copy on view is dark and grainy. This may be intentional but its stills and trailer look better.

Private Life-  Foster

Barrie Pattison 2026