Danny and Michael Philippou’s debut feature Talk to Me is shaping up to have quite the international festival run, due to make its European premiere at the Berlin Film Festival in February.
The film will screen in the Berlinale Special program, one of eight additional films confirmed for the strand over the weekend.
Later this week, Talk to Me will make its international premiere at Sundance Film Festival. The news of its Berlin programming comes only days after SXSW also announced that Talk to Me will screen in its Midnighters program in March, alongside fellow Australian titles Monolith and Late Night With The Devil.
Sophie Wilde leads the feature as lonely teenager Mia, who gets hooked on the thrills of conjuring spirits through a ceramic hand. When she is confronted by a soul claiming to be her dead mother, she unleashes a plague of supernatural forces.
Miranda Otto, Alexandra Jensen, Joe Bird, Otis Dhanji, Zoe Terakes and Chris Alosio also star.
Danny and Michael Philippou are best known as YouTubers RackaRacka, with the darkly comic Talk to Me their first feature.
The film is produced by Causeway Films’ Kristina Ceyton and Samantha Jennings. Danny Philippou wrote the script with Bill Hinzman. It first premiered at the Adelaide Film Festival last October.
Also announced for the Berlinale over the weekend was short documentary Marungka Tjalatjunu (Dipped in Black), created by Yankunytjatjara artist Derik Lynch and artist Matthew Thorne.
The multi disciplinary film and photographic art project follows Lynch’s road trip from the oppression of white city life in Adelaide back to country, Aputula, to perform his own story on sacred Inma ground.
Written and directed by Lynch and Thorne, Patrick Graham and Thorne produce. Andrew Gough is the cinematographer.
Marungka tjalatjunu will screen as the only Australian film in the Berlinale shorts strand.
The film was funded by the South Australian Film Corporation, Adelaide Film Festival and Panavision’s Short Film Production initiative, originally premiering in Adelaide last October.
Also screening at this year’s Berlin Film Festival from Australia is Soda Jerk’s Hello Dankness, in the festival’s Panaroma section. There will also be a retrospective screening of Muriel’s Wedding.
Berlin Film Festival runs February 16 – 23.