To be able to program the Australian premiere of Sophie Somerville’s debut feature Fwends is a “wonderful thing” for Sydney Film Festival festival director Nashen Moodley, given the filmmaker has previously twice won short film prizes at the festival.
Fwends, which won the Berlinale Forum’s Caligari Film Prize earlier this year, is one of the first 16 features the festival announced today in a teaser of its program, which will launch officially May 7.
The buddy comedy follows old friends, Jessie (Melissa Gan) and Em (Emmanuelle Mattana), as they reconnect over a weekend in Melbourne. Somerville wrote the script with the lead actors, and leant into improvisation on set. Carter Looker and Sarah Hegge-Taylor produced.
Somerville has previously won two of Sydney Film Festival’s Dendy Awards for Australian Short Film, including the live-action prize in 2021 for Peeps and the best director prize in 2023 with linda 4 eva.
Moodley feels it special for the festival to have followed the filmmaker since the beginning of her career.
“She has told us that those awards really made a difference to her in terms of financial support for making [Fwends] and attracting production support,” he tells IF.
“We always say that the Australian short film competition has been platform for some of Australia’s greatest filmmakers – the competition has been going for for more than five decades now – and to see this very new, vibrant example is a wonderful thing.”
Fwends is one of three Australian films announced for SFF today, with the others being animated feature Lesbian Space Princess, which won Best Feature Film at the Teddy Awards in Berlin, and documentary Make It Look Real, which just screened at SXSW.
Directed by Emma Hough Hobbs and Leela Varghese, Lesbian Space Princess is the first full-length animated feature made in South Australia, a product of the South Australia Film Corporation and Adelaide Film Festival’s Film Lab: New Voices initiative. Shabana Azeez voices the lead, who is thrust out of her sheltered life and into a galactic quest to save her bounty hunter ex-girlfriend from the ‘Straight White Maliens’.
“It’s so difficult to make an independent animated film. It’s painstaking work,” said Moodley. “It’s a very clever, very funny film, and it’s going to have people in stitches.”
Moodley first saw Make It Look Real, Kate Blackmore’s exploration of the role of intimacy coordinators, at the Adelaide Film Festival, calling it a “fascinating film” that delivers some twists. The doc follows intimacy coordinator Claire Warden as she guides actors through sex scenes for film Tightrope. It marks Blackmore’s feature documentary debut, and is produced Bethany Bruce and Daniel Joyce.
Of the international headliners announced today, Moodley is excited by Georgi Unkovski’s Sundance World Cinema Dramatic Audience Award-winner DJ Ahmet, “it’s just this beautiful, heart warming, uplifting film about the power of art to transform lives”, as well as Gabriel Mascaro’s The Blue Trail, winner of the Silver Bear Grand Jury Prize in Berlin, which he argues is “one of the films of the year”.
He also calls attention to On Becoming a Guinea Fowl, a Cannes-selected drama from Zambian-Welsh director Rungano Nyoni – “it’s something truly special, a film that’s absolutely unforgettable in its imagery and in its impact” – and Yeo Siew Hua’s Stranger Eyes, the first Singaporean film ever to be in competition Venice, which he regards as very contemporary and twisty.
Other features announced today are Barry Keoghan and Christopher Abbott-starrer Bring Them Down, Joshua Oppenheimer’s The End, starring Tilda Swinton and Michael Shannon, and from Sundance, Albert Birney’s Obex.
In documentary, Moodley is enthusiastic about the programming of 14-hour documentary Exergue – on documenta 14, which follows curator Adam Szymczyk and his team as they assemble the world’s most prominent art exhibition, documenta. Each screening will take place over three days in 4-5 hour segments with scheduled 15 minute intervals.
Indian filmmaker Nishtha Jain will be in Sydney to present her documentary Farming the Revolution, winner of the top prize at last year’s Hot Docs, which details the 13-month protest by 12 million Indian farmers who camped on the outskirts of Delhi to challenge unjust laws. Moodley is excited to host her Down Under, noting her work has not played in Australia much in the past.
Sydney will also play home to the Australian premieres of Mr. Nobody Against Putin, winner of Sundance’s World Cinema Documentary Special Jury Prize; director Kevin Macdonald’s One to One: John & Yoko, and the Sundance selected Speak, from directors Guy Mossman and Jennifer Tiexiera.
From New Zealand is doc Marlon Williams: Ngā Ao e Rua – Two Worlds, Ursula Grace Williams’ portrait of the musician as he reconnects with his roots and records his first album in te reo Māori.
The Sydney Film Festival has finalised around 60 per cent of its selection, Moodley says, adding it is also likely to add a new venue this year.
Flexipasses and subscriptions to Sydney Film Festival 2025 are on sale now, with tickets to specific films to go on sale after program launch May 7. The festival runs June 4-15.