The A to Z of What to Watch at the 2024 Adelaide Film Festival

Radelaide is rolling out the red carpet once again for the annual Adelaide Film Festival running from 22 October to 2 November with over 112 films on offer. The Curb digs into the films you should put on your list – from those we have seen to those we are excited to see.

We will be on the ground during this years festival, so make sure to keep an eye out for the interviews and reviews that we’ll be bringing you fresh out of the gate.

Contributions from Nadine Whitney, Andrew F Peirce, Christopher John, Virat Nehru, and Ron Meyer.


ALL WE IMAGINE AS LIGHT

Director Payal Kapadia

A call to reclaim their sense of personhood and identity for all those who have become invisible in contemporary India, Kapadia’s stunning film frames the search for intimacy for our three female protagonists—each with their own longings and tribulations—as an act of dissent in a country preoccupied with socially and morally policing their every move. ALL WE IMAGINE AS LIGHT is the first Indian film to compete for the Palme d’Or in over three decades. Kapadia created history as an Indian director by following up her Golden Eye win in 2021 for her documentary, with winning the Grand Prix at Cannes with her first full length fiction feature. The film, with its original canvas and quiet, but determined subversiveness, stands apart from everything that’s come to define Indian cinema.

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ANORA

Director Sean Baker

Palme D’Or winner, TIFF award winner, and in Baker’s own words “the culmination of all the things I’ve been concerned with in my other films.” ANORA stars Mikey Madison in a NYC set romantic comedy/tragedy where a sex worker falls in love with an marries the scion of a Russian oligarch and must then negotiate his family. Sean Baker’s version of PRETTY WOMAN. Universal praise for ANORA is one reason to be excited – Sean Baker’s commitment to creating charming hustlers is another.

NW

BLACK DOG

Director Guan Hu

Lang (Eddie Peng) a formerly admired stunt motorcyclist returns to his hometown on the edge of the Gobi Desert in China. He was incarcerated for manslaughter and in the time he’s been away the town has changed. Lang bonds with a black dog being hunted as a nuisance while he is being hunted by a man wanting revenge for the sins of Lang’s past.

A story of ordinary people left behind by the rapid economic development in China and won the Prix Un Certain Regard at Cannes.

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BLITZ

Director Steve McQueen

Saoirse Ronan stars as Rita, a mother searching for her son during the London Bombings of WWII. A young boy, George (Elliot Heffernan) goes on an adventure across the ruined city. The lives of strangers connect during the siren nights and bomb shelters. With a cast including Harris Dickinson, Paul Weller, Kathy Burke, and Stephen Graham, BLITZ is a chronicle of a city and a people fighting to survive.

NW

THE BRUTALIST

Director Brady Corbet

Writer/director Brady Corbet weaves the epic tale of László Tóth (Adrien Brody) over thirty years, following the Hungarian-born Jewish architect after he survives the Holocaust. Corbet and co-writer Mona Fastvold take audiences to America where László and his wife Erzsébet (Felicity Jones) experience the ‘American dream’. Hotly tipped to feature at the 2025 Academy Awards, The Brutalist is an epic for the ages.

The Brutalist is about a new society rising from the ashes of an old world order.

RM

CARNAGE FOR CHRISTMAS

Director Alice Maio Mackay

Alice Maio Mackay’s cinematic output puts many to shame, having put out five feature films in the space of a handful of years. With Carnage for Christmas, AMM plays with the true-crime podcaster genre, spinning in urban legends and the festive season with a dash of blood and brilliance. Oh, did I forget to mention that Alice is only twenty years old? Yeah, there’s that too. One to see with an audience.

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THE CORRESPONDENT

Director Kriv Stenders

Kriv Stenders, the director who never sleeps, continues to explore monumental moments in Australian history. Here he takes the story of war correspondent Peter Greste and brings it to life with Richard Roxburgh at the lead. The Correspondent makes its world premiere at the festival and promises to be a riveting and timely reminder of the need for a global free press.

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CROSSING

Director Levan Akin

Lia (Mzia Arabuli) is a retired Georgian school teacher who after the death of her sister sets out on a search for her missing trans niece Tekla in Istanbul. Having no idea where to look she reluctantly agrees to let the young and seemingly clueless Achi (Lucas Kankava) tag along. Unmoored in a large and bustling city, the two find themselves being taken under the wing of trans advocate and former sex worker Evirm (Deniz Dumanli). In Istanbul Lia’s search for her niece begins to open her eyes to the failures of herself and her society to care for people they consider less than for whatever reason. A touching and wonderful film about connection and dignity.

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DAHOMEY

Director Mati Diop

French-Senegalese director and actor Mati Diop follows up her Cannes Grand Prix winning ATLANTICS with the docu-fiction DAHOMEY (which reenacts the repatriation of twenty-six artefacts taken by France from the Kingdom of Dahomey and later the Republic of Benin, and the reaction of the Beninese people to the campaign, return, and continued colonisation through stolen art and objects of cultural significance.

DAHOMEY won The Golden Bear at the Berlin International Film Festival and is part of a vital discussion around historical and cultural heritage.

NW

EMILIA PÉREZ

Director Jacques Audiard

Jacques Audiard’s crime thriller, pop opera, and gender confirmation drama EMILIA PÉREZ won its women cast: Zoe Saldaña, Karla Sofía Gascón, and Selena Gomez combined Best Actress at Cannes.

Manitas (Gascón) approaches lawyer Rita (Saldaña) to get help with extraction from being a cartel boss – ideally so Manitas can live authentically as a woman. Emerging as Emilia she attempts to reconnect with her wife and children who no longer recognise her. Can Emilia stay hidden from her violent past too in the genre bending sensation?

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EVERY LITTLE THING

Director Sally Aiken

Sally Aiken reminds us that joy and happiness are the essential cousins to grief and tragedy, with the two bouncing against each other on a see saw as we move through life. Introducing the audience to Terry Masear, a dedicated soul who operates the Los Angeles Hummingbird Rescue; a home-run rehab facility for injured juvenile birds. An alluring, hypnotic, and soothing experience that takes your breath away. Through ephemeral moments of flowers wilting or in bloom which amplify the death and regeneration of nature and the kaleidoscope of colour shimmering on the wing of a hummingbird.

Like the hummingbird itself – a pollinator – Sally Aiken makes ideas bloom and thrive.

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FLOW

Director Gints Zilbalodis

A mesmeric animated fable of a drowned world addressing the follies and achievements of humanity as they are but echoes for the animals floating across vast ocean trying to survive on a planet that is ruined and renews. FLOW won a Bright Horizons award at Melbourne International Film Festival, took out multiple awards at Annecy, and is Latvia’s official submission for the Academy Awards. Join Cat and company on an unforgettable journey.

NW

FUTURE COUNCIL

Director Damon Gameau

Damon Gameau’s turn from actor into ecoactivist documentarian has been an interesting one to watch take place. From 20240 to Regenerating Australia, and now Future Council, Gameau has put results driven climate action on screen alongside the global climate activists who implement them in their own society. With Future Council, Gameau takes a group of kids across Europe on a vegetable-oil-powered bus to hold discussions with each other and CEOs of major companies. Guaranteed to provoke in depth discussions after screenings.

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THE GIRL AND THE NEEDLE

Director Magnus van Horn

Set in Copenhagen at the tail end and following years of WWII, Magnus van Horn’s silver gelatine nightmare follows Karoline as she is pushed further to the edges of desperation in an uncaring society. When she meets Dagmar a baby broker who promises to find a home for her unwanted child, she realises how dark and dangerous life can be for those living on the fringes. A stunning and searing piece of cinema inspired by a real case of a serial killer.

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GOOD ONE

Director India Donaldson

India Donaldson’s debut feature GOOD ONE has the quiet devastation of a Kelly Reichardt film. The teen protagonist Sam (Lily Collias) goes on a weekend camping trip with her father and his best friend in the Catskills and realises how damaged and damaging the two middle aged men are. Co-starring James Le Gros and Danny McCarthy, GOOD ONE reveals the burden of being a good daughter to a careless and selfish father and the object of unwanted attention.

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GRAND TOUR

Director Miguel Gomes

A rare cinematic experience where the pulse of the artificiality of the cinematic form beats in harmony with a Sans Soleil (Chris Marker) styled documentary essay and philosophical travelogue. A stagey screwball comedy meets boys own adventure meets colonial exotica set in Asia in the early 20th century blends with Portuguese director Miguel Gomes’ contemporary footage of the regions the characters inhabit. Having both forms flow freely into each other Gomes questions how images construct reality. Winner of Best Director at Cannes.

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JANET PLANET

Director Annie Baker

In the summer of 1991 eleven-year-old Lacy (Zoe Ziegler) orbits around her single mother Janet (Julianne Nicholson) with a quietly ferocious possessiveness. She’s not the only one drawn to Janet who seems to attract people who want to contain her. Baker’s deftly observed comedy and drama captures a woman who becomes a planet people want to jealously inhabit. Baker goes from award-winning playwright to director with ease.

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LESBIAN SPACE PRINCESS

Directors Emma Hough Hobbs & Leela Varghese

Seriously. How can you turn down a film that’s called Lesbian Space Princess? Already a sell-out screening, with a second on the horizon, this animated feast follows an introverted space princess on an inter-gay-lactic mission to save her ex from the Straight White Maliens is one of the many work in progress films screening at Adelaide Film Festival, making it the prime candidate to get on board a film that’s no doubt going to be a cultural touchpoint down the line. Do not miss this.

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MADE IN ENGLAND: THE FILMS OF POWELL AND PRESSBURGUR

Director David Hinton

Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger tapped into and intimately understood the human experience, in all its complexities and contradictions, and Hinton’s work as documentary director with his editors Margarida Cartaxo and Stuart Davidson allow the audience into their hearts and minds.

With Martin Scorsese as your teacher, this is the perfect film school in cinematic English romanticism and the art of the “composed film”, forms and techniques that should not fade away. The documentary is an honest, open, inviting, and reverent journey through the work of two masters of the craft and is must-see viewing for anyone who considers themselves a lover of movies.

CJ

MAKE IT LOOK REAL

Director Kate Blackmore

The role of an intimacy coordinator on set is one that is often talked about, but rarely understood. Director Kate Blackmore shines a spotlight on intimacy coordinators on set of the new Australian film Tightrope. Blackmore uses the documentary format to examine how directors navigate intimacy on set, and in doing so, she will shine a light on the often discussed, rare understood practice of modern filmmaking.

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NIGHTBITCH

Director Marielle Heller

Marielle Heller takes a bite into the expectations of motherhood in NIGHTBITCH. Amy Adams stars as a woman simply known as Mother who is living the stay-at-home limbo of caring for a small child and Husband Scoot McNair. Mother becomes increasingly convinced that she is turning into a dog. Billed as a comedy for women and a horror for men – Heller’s feral film brings the bitch to the fore.

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NOCTURNES

Directors Anupama Srinivasan and Anirban Dutta

Those who give themselves over slow cinema vibe of NOCTURNES will be greatly rewarded with a unique and contemplative experience like no other. Following ecologist Mansi Mungee and her assistant Bicki as they tirelessly monitor the existence of the moth life in the Eastern Himalayas.  Srinivasan and Dutta reject a didactic approach to their storytelling by embracing a gentle touch to their narrative, they invite the audience to become observers or scientists themselves by considering the question, ‘If we listen to nature, what does it tell us?’

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THE SEED OF THE SACRED FIG

Director Mohammad Rasoulof

Award winning THE SEED OF THE SACRED FIG is cinematic resistance and bravery – devastating in its use of the experience of a single family in Tehran to illustrate the violent repression of Iranian dissent against the theocratic state. Iman is promoted to investigating judge in Iran’s Revolutionary Court during the period of the Hijab protests. His wife Najmeh, and daughters Rezvan and Sana become the focus of his paranoia and misogyny as his controlling patriarchal behaviour turns threatening when his state issued gun goes missing and he believes Rezvan is responsible. A terrifying and timely thriller which led to Rasloulof fleeing Iran in fear of imprisonment.

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THE WOLVES ALWAYS COME AT NIGHT

Director Gabrielle Brady

Director Gabrielle Brady returns to screens after her searing 2018 documentary The Island of the Hungry Ghosts, this time presenting the lives of a young Mongolian couple as they are forced off the land they live and into the city. Facing a difficult future, the couple must find a way to navigate climate change, urban migration, and a changing world.

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The Adelaide Film Festival runs from 22 October to 2 November 2024

Tickets are available at AdelaideFilmFestival.org

Andrew F Peirce

Andrew is passionate about Australian film and culture. He is the co-chair of the Australian Film Critics Association, a Golden Globes voter, and the author of two books on Australian film, The Australian Film Yearbook - 2021 Edition, and Lonely Spirits and the King. You can find him online trying to enlist people into the cult of Mac and Me.

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