Documentary Luku Ngarra has won Adelaide Film Festival’s (AFF) Change Award, while Are You Really The Universe took home the Flinders University Short Film Prize.
Australian films also dominated the festival’s audience awards, with the Feature Fiction prize going to Dick Dale’s Ribspreader, while Nathaniel Schmidt and Brenda Matthews’ The Last Daughter won the Audience Award for Feature Documentary.
The prizes were presented during the festival’s closing night on Sunday, during a screening of Michael Philippou and Daniel Philippou’s (aka RackaRacka) debut feature Talk to Me.
AFF, now an annual event, cracked both box office and audience attendance records this year. Audience attendance was up 13 per cent from 2020 – which was also a record result – and box office was 56 per cent up on the last pre-pandemic festival in 2018, suggesting expansion into multiple venues across Adelaide has proven to be successful.
Directed by Sinem Saban and produced by Rev Dr Djiniyini Gondarra, Luku Ngarra, had its world premiere at Adelaide. The film is an Indigenous-funded documentary about this history and culture of Arnhem Land, seen through the eyes of Gondarra.
Set mainly in the remote community of Elcho Island, it seeks to challenge the dominant mainstream paradigm that has failed to recognise the true value and importance of traditional Aboriginal law and culture for the wellbeing of remote communities.
As the winner of the Change Award, bestowed for positive social or environmental impact and cinema expressing new directions for humanity, the filmmaking team receives $5,000.
Tamara Hardman’s Are You Really The Universe stars Tilda Cobham-Hervey, Antoine Jelk and Nigel Tripodi. It centres on Alfie, a hopeless romantic, who despite nearing 30 remains gloriously naive. When he meets Effie in a real-life meet cute, he believes they are destined for forever. But Effie, the daughter of the kind of parents who never hold hands, is much more realistic.
Dale’s Ripsreader is a decade-in-the-making splatterpunk horror, which centres on a tobacco advertising icon, Bryan Burns’ (Tommy Darwin) life is in ruins. After his mother dies of lung cancer, he is tormented by a talking cigarette on an anti-smoking billboard. He snaps and transforms into the Ribspreader, a killer stalking the city, extinguishing smokers and cutting out their lungs to make his macabre smoking jacket.
An AFF Investment Fund film, The Last Daughter follows Matthews’ mission to unearth the truth about her past and to reconcile the two sides of her family. Matthews’ first memories were of growing up in a loving white foster family, before she was suddenly taken away and returned to her Aboriginal family. Decades later, she feels disconnected from both halves of her life, and goes searching for the foster family with whom she had lost all contact.
Both Matthews and Schmidt were mentored by Larissa Behrendt, with Simon Williams and Brendon Skinner producing.
As previously announced, Indonesian film Autobiography, directed by Makbul Mubarak, won the festival’s $10,000 Feature Fiction Award, while the Ukrainian The Hamlet Syndrome, directed by Elwira Niewiera and Piotr Rosolowski won the equivalent documentary prize. The directors have since announced they are to donate the prize money to their film’s Ukrainian subjects, who are fighting in the war against Russia.
“Audiences embraced the AFF 2022 program and demonstrated a clear desire to go out to the cinema. The record-breaking box office and attendance results reaffirm the desire to see films in cinemas and engage with courageous filmmaking,” said Mat Kesting AFF CEO and creative director.
“An extraordinary cross section of work from around the world was presented including a remarkable crop of new films from South Australia. We congratulate all the filmmakers.
“We are proud to have supported numerous directorial debuts within the festival – including half of the AFFIF feature investment films – Talk to Me, Carnifex, Monolith, The Last Daughter and Madeleine Parry’s theatrical debut The Angels: Kickin’ Down the Door.”