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Terry Notary plays a performance artist impersonating an ape in a scene from Ruben Östlund’s Palme d’Or winning film The Square
Credit: Supplied
Seven new films screening straight from the Cannes Film Festival, including a number of high-profile award-winners, have been added to the already impressive program for the 2017 Sydney Film Festival.
Commencing this coming Wednesday, the festival, which already included 10 straight-from-Cannes films alongside 278 others, will now screen the Australian premiere of Swedish director Ruben Östlund’s surrealist art world satire The Square, the 2017 Palme d’Or winner starring Elizabeth Moss and Dominic West.
Winner of the Un Certain Regard category’s main prize, A Man of Integrity from Iran’s Mohammed Rasoulof, will also have its local premiere and tells the story of a goldfish farmer who finds himself in conflict with an authoritarian regime, albeit on a much smaller village scale. Notably, this is Rasoulof’s sixth feature, made secretly in a country where he’s banned from filmmaking and where he awaits a prison sentence.
Good Time, the film that has garnered rave reviews for its star Robert Pattinson’s career-defining performance, will also make its way to Sydney cinemas where it’s sure to make its presence felt not only through Pattinson’s critically-lauded performance, but for its score by Oneohtrix Point Never and a relentless pace set by its co-directors, brothers Ben and Josh Safdie.
Also from Cannes, Jupiter’s Moon, a film that uses the sci-fi genre to address contemporary geopolitical issues through its main character – a Syrian refugee with superpowers – and prolific Japanese director Takashi Miike’s 100th film, the gory manga adaptation Blade of the Immortal. Two Cannes-selected debut films, Ali Soozandeh’s animation Tehran Taboo, which also explores the secret lives of young Iranians in pursuit of personal and sexual freedom, and I Am Not a Witch, a dark comedy exploring the tribulations of young orphaned ‘witches’ from Zambian-born Welsh director Rungano Nyoni will screen as well.
Previously announced, Sofia Coppola’s award-winning turn as best director for The Beguiled, a remake of a Southern gothic novel-turned-film that stars Colin Farrell alongside Nicole Kidman, will make its debut, as will In The Fade, which saw Diane Kruger win best actress for her performance in German-director Fatih Akin’s film about a grieving mother and vengeful widow whose husband and son die in a bomb explosion in Hamburg.
You can find out more information about all of these films and more here.
Tile and cover image: Courtesy of Cannes Film Festival
