2023 FESTIVAL PROGRAM

Raw, honest, charmingly real and made in the Inner West, THE LONGEST WEEKEND is the deeply humanistic brainchild of screenwriter/producer Jorden Daley and debut director Molly Haddon, whose facility for characterisation and crackling, authentic dialogue is instantly and furiously obvious.

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Starring Mia Artemis (Netflix's Sweet Tooth and upcoming Pieces of Her), Elly Hiraani Clapin, Adam Golledge, Tammy MacIntosh and John Batchelor, the film follows three siblings who unexpectedly converge on the family home while their mother is away, and discover that their absent father is trying to connect with youngest brother Rio. "I wanted to make a film that was relatable, that people could see themselves in, even in the smallest of ways" says director Molly Haddon. "But it's an emotional piece that touches on some very raw elements. Our actors had to delve deep. They brought these characters to life with their dedication and their honesty, and I’m so grateful for that."

A terse, gritty, wholly authentic slice of Inner West life (a main character even works at Gould's Books in Newtown!), 1999's ERSKINEVILLE KINGS is one of the best representations of the local area ever committed to film. Wholly fitting and with much excitement, Inner West Film Fest will be presenting this tough-minded Aussie favourite from writer/star Marty Denniss and director Alan White (Risk, Reclaim) in a beautiful 35mm print, marking the film's first public screening in many years.

 

A searing emotional powerhouse about the explosive rifts that rip a family apart, ERSKINEVILLE KINGS showcases a towering early turn from Hugh Jackman, who is ably supported by Marty Denniss, Joel Edgerton, Leah Vandenberg and a pre-The Bad Guys author Aaron Blabey. 

An uncompromising cinematic slap to the face from co-directors Trudy Hellier and Susie Dee, and writer, celebrated playwright Patricia Cornelius, the shattering new Australian conversation-starter SHIT is a psychological drama which unfolds over one long night of incarceration in a bleak holding cell.

 

Caged for hours on end, tough-nuts Billy (Nicci Wilks), Bobby (Sarah Ward) and Sam (Peta Brady) slowly, uncertainly reveal their stories to each other. Theirs are stories of a lifetime of violence, of abuse, and of institutionalisation, and they’re all told with unsentimental, sometimes comical, and often gut-wrenching insight.

 

Featuring the kind of honest, in-your-face female characters rarely seen on cinema screens, SHIT will slam you into the back of your seat and provoke a powerful, deeply emotional response. 

“What I’m doing is just trying to make my own genre,” says Inner West resident, actor, writer and director Jason Trost. “I’m just bored with movies, and I want to make things that are just generally wrong for bigger movies. That’s what I want to do.”

 

With his three previous FP films (The FP, FP2: Beats Of Rage, and FP3: Escape From Bako), Trost has been doing exactly crafting a bizarre, highly inventive low budget action sci-fi franchise set in a post-apocalyptic future, where two rival gangs fight for turf by playing “Beat Beat Revelation”, a deadly version of Dance, Dance, RevolutionTM.

 

With FP 4EVZ, the fourth entry in the increasingly curious franchise, Trost really lets loose with his craziest adventure yet. In this genre-bender, a legendary family of rhythm game warriors must battle their way deep into the future to save what remains of a booze fueled humanity from a horrific calamity that threatens to turn them all stone cold sober 4 EVZ.

“Olga is a teenager in exile,” explains writer/director Elie Grappe. “A high-level athlete, her mind and her training are upset by the revolution breaking out in her native country. How can she overcome the violence that she feels being away from home?” A tough but highly elegant coming-of-age drama, Olga is set in the rarefied but bone-jarring world of professional ballet, where its eponymous fifteen-year-old heroine is faced with a barrage of major life decisions.

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Exiled in Switzerland, gifted gymnast Olga is struggling to find a place in the country’s National Sports Center when violence erupts in her native Ukraine and engulfs her family. “I wanted to explore the link between geographical and personal borders” explains Elie Grappe. “I wanted to make a film about exile, with a heroine who feels that she does not belong… Olga is torn between several loyalties and faced with a geopolitical situation beyond her.”

From the creators of the family fantasy adventure The Legend Of The Five, and partly shot in the Inner West, including stunning sequences captured at Marrickville Town Hall, The Red Shoes: Next Step stars American-Australian ballet dancer and actress Juliet Doherty (High Strung: Free Dance) and The Conjuring 2’s Lauren Esposito.

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A sparkling, wholly effervescent coming-of-age drama, The Red Shoes: Next Step follows talented young dancer, Sam (Juliet Doherty), whose world crumbles after an unexpected life-changing event. Sam walks away from dancing and ballet, but life eventually leads back to her old dance school. An old rival, a long-time crush, and her former dance teacher eventually begin to guide Sam back to what she loves most.

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“The Red Shoes: Next Step explores themes through dance that are universal across all cultures and ages” says producer Tanya Esposito. “With a predominantly female lead cast and a female director in Joanne Samuel, the story’s foundation of friendship represents an authentic female voice that audiences will relate to.”

The true story of how Dave Fishwick, a working class man and self-made millionaire, fought to set up a community bank so that he could help the local businesses of Burnley not only survive, but thrive. In his bid to help his beloved community, he has to take on the elitist financial institutions of London and fight to receive the first, new banking license to be issued in over 100 years.

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Stars Rory Kinnear, Hugh Bonneville, Joel Fry, Jo Hartley and Def Leppard!

“Rory Kinnear is brilliant in this warming comedy about a Burnley businessman who took on London’s elite and won.” – The Guardian

In this profoundly moving, often strikingly confrontational partner-piece from co-writer/director Ioseb “Soso” Bliadze and co-writer/lead actress Taki Mumladze, female characters are forefronted and explored with rare honesty and realism.

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Set in the Georgian capital of Tbilisi, A Room Of My Own swirls around 24-year-old Tina (Taki Mumladze), who finds herself lost, broke and abandoned by her family and friends. When she moves in with the free-spirited Megi (Mariam Khundadze), she finds an unlikely refuge from past traumas, while discovering much more.

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A moving tale of female relationships, A Room Of My Own lacerates with its raw honesty and deep well of sensitivity. “As women in Georgia – and not only in Georgia – we still have a long way to go” says co-writer/star Taki Mumladze. “We still need to fight to have our own lives without male influence. But I, like Tina, know that it’s worth fighting for!”

Shot in the glorious Achill Island in Ireland, which audiences will recognise from the beautiful scenery in The Banshees of Inisherin, this is the surprising follow up to The Fencer from Finnish director Klaus Härö.

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Iconic Scottish actor James Cosmo (Braveheart, Highlander, Game of Thrones) plays Howard, a retired sea captain, who falls in love with his home-aid Annie (Brid Brennan from Brooklyn), but his middle age daughter does not approve.

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“First love and very late love both come as a surprise,” Klaus Härö told film industry bible Variety. “When something you thought was a thing of the past suddenly makes a return, there is some innocence about it. It was the first spark that led to us making this film.”

“Sergio Leone is my favourite filmmaker,” writer, director and movie lover Quentin Tarantino writes in his foreword to the book Once Upon A Time In The West: Shooting A Masterpiece, “The movie that made me consider filmmaking, the movie that showed me how a director does what he does, how a director can control a movie through his camera, is Once Upon a Time in the West."

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Though revered for his beloved Dollars Trilogy starring Clint Eastwood, the greatest film of spaghetti western maestro Sergio Leone is unquestionably Once Upon A Time In The West, a sprawling, deeply artistic epic about the cruel incursion of the nation-building railroad into the heart of America.

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Featuring a rare villainous turn from Henry Fonda and a masterclass in heroic stoicism from Charles Bronson, Once Upon a Time in the West is nothing short of cinematic perfection, and the Inner West Film Fest will be screening a very special 4K remastered print of this magisterial masterpiece, not only paying tribute to one of the greatest films of all time, but also to Leichhardt’s Italian cultural heritage.

A pioneering feminist crowd-pleaser released way back in 1980, the angrily sparkling hit comedy 9 To 5 is just as relevant now as it was over forty years ago, and the film’s legacy and significance is beautifully captured in the wildly entertaining new documentary STILL WORKING 9 To 5.

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With a sly grin but a bold lack of compromise, the film explores the challenges and barriers to success for women in the workforce and society, and the disappointing lack of progress that has been made for women since the original release of the 1980 blockbuster comedy.

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The new documentary, co-directed by once Inner West resident Camille Hardman, includes commentary from original 9 To 5 stars Jane Fonda, Lily Tomlin, Dolly Parton, and Dabney Coleman, alongside advocates and leaders of prominent women's rights organisations including Lilly Ledbetter, Zoe Nicholson, and Karen Nussbaum. “It’s a delicious blend of entertainment and inspiration” says Ellen Cassedy, co-founder of the National Association Of Working Women.

Over a decade in the making, and courtesy of filmmaking veterans and local heroes John Hughes and Tom Zubrycki (a long-time Leichhardt resident), the compelling documentary Senses Of Cinema is a vibrant, essential document of Australian independent film practice that doubles as a comprehensive overview of over 60 years of Australian socio-political life, from the 1960s to the present.

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At its centre is the important role the Australian Filmmakers’ Co-Operatives played within the cultural upheavals of the Left in the ’60s-’80s. Birthing major Australian talents like Jan Chapman, Gillian Armstrong and Phillip Noyce, the Filmmakers’ Co-Operatives of Sydney and Melbourne created stunning cinematic documents of the time in lieu of any real sense of a local film industry.

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“It was the early 1970s,” director Phillip Noyce has said of the driving force behind the highly provocative Filmmakers’ Co-Operatives. “It was the end of 23 years of Liberal/National Party rule… there was a changing of the guard.”