Sydney Film Festival Digital Archive Online

The Sydney Film Festival has now placed its digital archive online as part of the 2013 Festival. The archive covers all of the films shown at the festival for the past 60 years.

Click the link below to go to the website -

The Sydney Film Festival Digital Archive

Sydney Film Festival 2013 - Film Review - Thanks For Sharing

Mark Ruffalo and Gwyneth Paltrow - Thanks For Sharing

Film director and screenwriter, Stuart Blumberg and an experienced and diverse cast, including Mark Ruffalo, Gwyneth Paltrow, Tim Robbins, Pink and Josh Gad, bring an unusual comedy topic to the screen with a warm, witty screenplay. The story line follows a group of people who join a support group for sex addiction. There is also a nod given in the film to other addictions which affect people's lives such as drugs and alcohol and this interplays as a sub plot. The general outline of the film follows Adam (Mark Ruffalo), who has reached the 5 year mark in controlling his urges and is ready to consider dating and a relationship again. He meets the attractive but wary Phoebe (Gwyneth Paltrow), a cancer survivor who has previously experienced a relationship with an alcoholic. Adam's sponsor in the support group, Mike (Tim Robbins) has his own problem to confront through his now recovered drug-addicted son returning home. A newcomer to the group is Neil (Josh Gad) a doctor whose addiction is destroying his hard worked-for career in medicine. The group is completed by Dede (Pink) whose life and relationships are being ruined by her own addiction. The film has many funny moments as well as scenes which confront the issue of addictions in whatever guise they come. The overall message is one of hope and life affirmation.  

Sydney Film Festival 2013 - Film Review - Breathe In

Felicity Jones and Guy Pearce - Breathe In

Aspirations and reality, frustrated ambition, disconnection and a sense of entrapment are the critical themes explored in Breathe In from director and screenwriter, Drake Doremus. Set in a small community in Connecticut in the United States, the film story line centres on the life of high school music teacher, Keith Reynolds (Guy Pearce), a former rock musician now classical music cellist and his family. Reynolds lives a standard middle class life with his cookie-jar-collector wife Meg and his sports oriented daughter Lauren. He plays part-time for a New York Symphony Orchestra and yearns to have be a permanent member of the Orchestra so he can leave teaching. Into this situation comes British foreign exchange student and classical musician, Sophie (Felicity Jones) who not only is accomplished in her field of music but understands the rigours and fears of the concert performer. She also seeks escape and is drawn to Keith on several levels and the two almost start a relationship and run off together, just as discovery by Megan and Lauren occurs.

This is an intimate family drama film with good understated scripting and consummate performances by Guy Pearce and Felicity Jones. The seemingly perfect suburban family is seen as a facade and the subject of frustrated ambition is poignantly highlighted - all the more so as Keith wins a permanent position with the Symphony Orchestra with Sophie's calming presence. An intelligent drama carefully constructed.

Sydney film Festival 2013 - Film Review - Only God Forgives

Ryan Gosling - Only God Forgives

Danish director, Nicolas Winding Refn brings to the screen a visually dazzling yet brutal story set almost entirely in the neon, nightime world of Bangkok. With a notable cast including Ryan Gosling, Kristin Scott Thomas and from Thailand, Vithaya Pansringarm and Yayaying Rhatha Phongam, this muscular film set against the backdrop of Thai Kickboxing and organised crime follows a theme of rage, betrayal and ultimately a form of redemption. The storyline follows Julian (Ryan Gosling) an American who runs a Thai boxing club in Bangkok and whose brother, Billy operates a drug dealing business on the side. When Billy is murdered as revenge for his killing of a Thai young sex worker girl, Jenna (Kristin Scott Thomas) the mother of Julian and Billy, arrives in Bangkok to collect her son's body and to seek revenge. Their protagonist is a senior Thai police officer Chang, also known as the 'Angel of Vengeance' who ceremonially dispatches his opponents with a Thai short sword (known as the Krabi) with a terrifying interpretation of justice. When Jenna orders a hit on the Thai police which fails, there is no doubt that little mercy will be shown.

This film has a superb element of menace, dark mood setting, controlled extreme violence with just a small element of the similar cinematic style of Quentin Tarantino (Kill Bill). Although not for the faint hearted, this film has value within its genre not the least of which is the rendition of characters by the actors - Kristin Scott Thomas portrays Jenna superbly as manipulative, malevolent with elements of Oedipal tendencies, Ryan Gosling is the brooding, sexually repressed dysfunctional Julian while Vithaya Pansringarm provides the contrast with the disciplined, measured, take-no-prisoners approach to policing.

Sydney Film Festival 2013 - Film Review - Before Midnight

Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy - Before Midnight

Richard Linklater's film starring Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy is a tedious affair resembling a endless, trivial conversation shot with a single continuous take - but lasting over one and a half hours. An American man, Jesse (Ethan Hawke) and a French woman, Celina (Julie Delpy) now close to middle age, recount the moment when they first met as young adults on a train in Austria and thereafter the ongoing details of their domestic life are recounted while they constantly walk (and sit) in various locations - in ruins, in shops, on the seaside, as guests in a group lunch, at a cafe, in the car and so on. The dialogue is quite well written but unduly repetitive and endless with little other activity occurring on screen. This is a film which could have provided a greater level of depth and fails to use the talents of Hawke or Delpy to any great level. Although the film is promoted as providing an atmosphere between the two leads as 'fresh and new' in reality, the title of the film could have been better set as 'After Midnight' so the audience could be forgiven for being asleep.

Sydney Film Festival 2013 - Film Review - For Those In Peril

Aaron (George MacKay) searches for his lost brother - For Those in Peril

Scottish film film director, Paul Wright, makes his feature film debut with this story about loss, alienation and ultimately magical transcendence. The plot line for this film follows a young fisherman, Aaron who is the sole survivor of the loss of a fishing trawler, the other five crew including his older brother, Michael disappearing into the sea. Aaron cannot remember any aspect of the event and the local village, imbued with superstition  and seagoing folklore blame him for the loss. Aaron becomes isolated from the community and causes further grief and anger amongst the village by insisting his brother is still alive and complicating the situation by becoming involved with his older brother's fiancee. The film is almost as cold and bleak as the location in  Scotland at which it was shot. Aaron's mother, Cathy (actress Kate Dickie) is torn between the loss of her eldest son Michael and the apparent mental illness of Aaron and reluctantly she agrees to have him institutionalised. The night before he is due to leave, Aaron disappears and the film closes with his transformation. This film has a blanket of sadness throughout its length yet it's not exaggerated nor overstated.

Sydney Film Festival 2013 - Film Review - The Broken Circle Breakdown

Elise (Veerle Baetens) and Didier (Johan Heldenbergh) on stage 

A Belgian bluegrass music band playing American country music and a passionate relationship between the band's lead guitarist and his tattoo artist (and later the band's lead vocalist) form the basis for this film by Felix van Groeningen. The central characters, Didier (the bluegrass band's banjo-playing lead - actor, Johan Heldenbergh) and Elise (the tattoo artist and vocalist - actress, Veerle Baetens) have been in a rapturous relationship for seven years further infused by the music of the band which Elise joins as lead singer. Together with their little daughter, Maybelle, they form a happy family unit and picture of domestic bliss. When Maybelle falls ill with cancer, Didier and Elise are severely tested and their relationship starts coming apart. Ultimately tragedy occurs more than once in this film with the full spectrum of emotions being displayed on the cinema screen. Felix van Groeningen's screenplay is masterful with its conveyance of passion matched by the vitality of bluegrass music making a potent mix.