Tree, Wasted on the Young in SFF competition
Julie Bertucelli’s The Tree and Ben C. Lucas’ Wasted on the Young will represent Australia in the Sydney Film Festival Official Competition.
They will compete against Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives, Heartbeats, How I Ended this Summer, If I Want to Whistle, I Whistle, The Killer Inside Me, Life During Wartime, Lola, Women Without Men, Four Lions and Moloch Tropical for the $60,000 cash prize.
The Jury president is producer Jan Chapman, joined by Sundance director John Cooper and three other jurors, which will be announced in the coming weeks.
This year’s edition of the SFF will open on June 2 with Shirley Barrett’s local film South Solitary, starring Miranda Otto and Barry Otto. The closing night selection is the American production The Kids Are Alright, directed by Lisa Cholodenko and starring Julianne Moore, Annette Bening, Mark Ruffalo and Australian actress Mia Wasikowska.
Other local films that will screen during the festival are The Loved Ones, Red Hill and The Waiting City and, as part of the Immortal Seduction – The Vampire Movie program, the classic Thirst.
Restored versions of Jan Chapman’s The Last Days of Chez Nous and Love Serenade will also be part of the program.
Ten shorts were short-listed for the Awards for Australian Short Films:
Live Action:
- Bad Language – Dir-Scr-Prod: Viron Papadopoulos
- Deeper Than Yesterday – Dir-Scr: Ariel Kleiman
- Glenn Owen Dodds – Dir: Frazer Bailey
- The Kiss – Dir-Scr: Ashlee Page
- A Parachute Falling in Siberia – Dir: Ian Meadows
- Pop – Dir-Scr: Tobias Anderson
- Suburbia – Dir-Scr: Antonio Oreña-Barlin
Animation:
- The Adjustable Cosmos – Dir Adam Duncan
- The Lost Thing – Dir Shaun Tan, Andrew Ruhemann
- How to Lose Weight in 60 Seconds – Dir Dave Carter
The Australian Documentary Prize also announced its finalists: the 3D film Cane Toads: The Conquest (Dir-Prod: Mark Lewis), Drive (Dir-Prod: Bronwyn Purvis, Telen Rodwell), Eye (Dir-Prod: Andy Canny, Donna McCrum), Indonesia Calling: Joris Ivens in Australia (dir: John Hughes), Mind (Dir: Emma Crimmings), New Beijing: Reinventing a City (Dir: Georgia Wallace-Crabbe), The Snowman (Dir: Juliet Lamont), Strange Birds in Paradise – A West Papua Story (Dir: Charlie Hill-Smith) and Three Boys Dreaming ( Dir-Prod: Michael Cordell).
The Sydney Film Festival will run from 2-14 June. The full program will be available on May 7.
