Unmissable Festival Films

We’re excited to be back and bring you some of the best cinema to festivals across Australia.

Including the 2021 Cannes Film Festival competition entry Bergman Island, and Tribeca Film Festival winner The Kids. Learn a little about our films and where you can see them below.

Bergman Island
Director: Mia Hansen-Løve
A couple of American filmmakers, Chris (P.T. Anderson’s Phantom Thread superstar Vicky Krieps) and Tony (Tim Roth) retreat to the mythical Fårö island for the Summer. In this wild, breathtaking landscape where Bergman lived and shot his most celebrated pieces, they hope to find inspiration for their upcoming films.

As days spent separately pass by, the fascination for the island operates on Chris and souvenirs of her first love resurface. Lines between reality and fiction will then progressively blur and tear our couple even more apart.

• Brisbane International Film Festival, Sun 24 & Sat 30 Oct
• Sydney Film Festival, Sat 6, Mon 8 & Wed 10 Nov

The Kids
Director: Eddie Martin
In the early 1990s, before New York City’s mass gentrification, a group of disparate youth ventured outside their broken homes into the city’s brutal streets. United by skateboarding, they cultivated a family and built a unique lifestyle that ultimately inspired Larry Clark’s 1995 ground-breaking film, KIDS.

The crew became overnight commodities, thrust into the mainstream spotlight. Left adrift under the bright lights, some discovered transcendent lives and careers – while others, abandoned and unequipped to handle fame, suffered fatal consequences.

• Sydney Film Festival, Fri 5 & Mon 8 Nov

Ablaze
Director: Alec Morgan & Tiriki Onus
The true story of the first Aboriginal filmmaker William Bill Onus.

Ablaze tells of Bill Onus, a Yorta Yorta and Wiradjuri man from Victoria, a truly heroic cultural and political figure who revived his peopleʼs culture in the 1940s and ignited a civil rights movement that would, against enormous odds, change the course of history.

• Caloundra Film Festival, Sun 10 Oct (Q&A post film)
• Brisbane International Film Festival, Sat 23 & Sat 30 Oct

Prisoners of the Ghostland
Director: Sion Sono
A notorious criminal, Hero (Nicolas Cage), is sent to rescue the governor’s daughter, who has disappeared into a dark supernatural universe.

To escape the nightmare world, Hero must break the evil curse controlling the mysterious Ghostland.

• Brisbane International Film Festival, Fri 22 & Sun 31 Oct

BIFF is taking place from October 21 to 31 – and SFF from November 3 to 21.