Latest news with #StateTheatre
The Age
4 days ago
- Entertainment
- The Age
This TV star spent so long making a film in a Sydney funeral home that they put him on staff
Years later, he met one of the funeral directors, Michele Salamone, in a cafe and thought he seemed like 'the John Wayne of Leichhardt'. When the cafe owner asked whether business was good, Salamone deadpanned 'yeah, fridge is full'. Byers thought the dignified work of an Italian funeral parlour would make a great documentary and, once filming was under way, he was given an unpaid job. 'I think they realised I may never finish the film and they were like 'we've got to get something out of this',' he said. But doing everything himself – writing, directing, acting, shooting, recording sound, producing and editing – proved challenging. 'It's not a chill thing to make a feature film in a funeral home,' Byers said. 'It's not a chill thing to make a feature film at all, let alone on your own, let alone in a funeral home, let alone for six years, seven years, eight years by the end of it. 'So I just threw everything I had and more at it until it was done. I'm quite glad that I finished it before it finished me.' Like Sparrow, Byers struggled as he shot during the pandemic after the Black Summer bushfires, running out of money, and going through a break-up and some distressing funerals. 'This film, rather than this beautiful centre point of expression and release in my life, just became this ultimate liability,' he said. 'This terrible decision that I'd made that was not going to solve itself.' At the premiere, Byers will dispel any funereal vibes by having the film's composer and sound designer, Luke Fuller, bring a boombox to play 'some '80s Italian Bocelli [style music] which I know will please all the Italians in the house'. The festival, which runs from June 4 to 15, opens with Australian director Michael Shanks' horror film Together, which became controversial when an American production company filed a lawsuit claiming it was a 'blatant rip-off' of a 2023 comic romance - an allegation the Together team's agent called 'frivolous and without merit'. Festival director Nashen Moodley described Together as probably the most anticipated Australian film of the year. 'It's so smart, it's so funny,' he said. 'Wickedly funny.' Films from 70 countries will screen in the State Theatre and nine other venues. While stories from exotic locations are always part of the festival's charm, there are Hollywood stars right across the program. Naomi Watts plays a New York novelist with Bill Murray as her mentor in The Friend, Tilda Swinton and Michael Shannon are living underground after the apocalypse in The End, Jodie Foster is a psychiatrist turned investigator in Vie Privee, Jacob Elordi and Daisy Edgar-Jones are gamblers drawn to each other in On Swift Horses, Carey Mulligan plays a musician in The Ballad of Wallis Island and Tom Hiddleston is a mysterious businessman in The Life Of Chuck. The Iranian thriller that won at Cannes last weekend, Jafar Panahi's It Was Just An Accident, is among 12 films running in the $60,000 competition for 'audacious, courageous and cutting-edge' cinema.
Sydney Morning Herald
4 days ago
- Entertainment
- Sydney Morning Herald
This TV star spent so long making a film in a Sydney funeral home that they put him on staff
Years later, he met one of the funeral directors, Michele Salamone, in a cafe and thought he seemed like 'the John Wayne of Leichhardt'. When the cafe owner asked whether business was good, Salamone deadpanned 'yeah, fridge is full'. Byers thought the dignified work of an Italian funeral parlour would make a great documentary and, once filming was under way, he was given an unpaid job. 'I think they realised I may never finish the film and they were like 'we've got to get something out of this',' he said. But doing everything himself – writing, directing, acting, shooting, recording sound, producing and editing – proved challenging. 'It's not a chill thing to make a feature film in a funeral home,' Byers said. 'It's not a chill thing to make a feature film at all, let alone on your own, let alone in a funeral home, let alone for six years, seven years, eight years by the end of it. 'So I just threw everything I had and more at it until it was done. I'm quite glad that I finished it before it finished me.' Like Sparrow, Byers struggled as he shot during the pandemic after the Black Summer bushfires, running out of money, and going through a break-up and some distressing funerals. 'This film, rather than this beautiful centre point of expression and release in my life, just became this ultimate liability,' he said. 'This terrible decision that I'd made that was not going to solve itself.' At the premiere, Byers will dispel any funereal vibes by having the film's composer and sound designer, Luke Fuller, bring a boombox to play 'some '80s Italian Bocelli [style music] which I know will please all the Italians in the house'. The festival, which runs from June 4 to 15, opens with Australian director Michael Shanks' horror film Together, which became controversial when an American production company filed a lawsuit claiming it was a 'blatant rip-off' of a 2023 comic romance - an allegation the Together team's agent called 'frivolous and without merit'. Festival director Nashen Moodley described Together as probably the most anticipated Australian film of the year. 'It's so smart, it's so funny,' he said. 'Wickedly funny.' Films from 70 countries will screen in the State Theatre and nine other venues. While stories from exotic locations are always part of the festival's charm, there are Hollywood stars right across the program. Naomi Watts plays a New York novelist with Bill Murray as her mentor in The Friend, Tilda Swinton and Michael Shannon are living underground after the apocalypse in The End, Jodie Foster is a psychiatrist turned investigator in Vie Privee, Jacob Elordi and Daisy Edgar-Jones are gamblers drawn to each other in On Swift Horses, Carey Mulligan plays a musician in The Ballad of Wallis Island and Tom Hiddleston is a mysterious businessman in The Life Of Chuck. The Iranian thriller that won at Cannes last weekend, Jafar Panahi's It Was Just An Accident, is among 12 films running in the $60,000 competition for 'audacious, courageous and cutting-edge' cinema.
Otago Daily Times
5 days ago
- Entertainment
- Otago Daily Times
‘Pike River' trailer released, first screening in Sydney
Robyn Malcolm takes on the role of Sonya Rockhouse in the movie Pike River. PHOTOS: SUPPLIED Greymouth is set to host the New Zealand premiere of the upcoming Pike River film this October, although it will screen first at the Sydney Film Festival next week. The trailer for the film was released yesterday, offering a glimpse into a retelling of the events leading up to the November 2010 explosion that killed 29 men underground at the Pike River coalmine, and the long battle the families of the miners have faced since. The New Zealand movie opens locally on October 30. New Zealand actresses Melanie Lynskey (Two and a Half Men, Yellowjackets, The Last of Us, Heavenly Creatures) and Robyn Malcolm (After the Party, Far North, Outrageous Fortune) play Anna Osborne (Lynskey) and Sonya Rockhouse (Malcolm), who both lost their loved ones in the disaster and became leading voices in the long fight for truth and accountability. The film also features Lucy Lawless (Xena, My Life is Murder) as unionist Helen Kelly, and Tim Gordon (The Kick) as Pike families spokesman Bernie Monk. Pike River was partly shot on location in Greymouth in 2023, and some families were closely involved in the production. The film is supported by the Families Committee and Families Reference Group. Film-makers say they have chosen to premiere the movie in Greymouth to honour the community at the heart of the story, though it will have its world premiere in Sydney on June 7, as a "special presentation" at the 2000-seat State Theatre. Some Pike River families from New Zealand and Australia will be attending that screening, along with members of the cast and crew. Melanie Lynskey stars as Anna Osborne. Greymouth Mayor Tania Gibson watched the trailer yesterday morning. "It's going to be an emotional time — watching the trailer was hard in itself." The film would be good for the community to see, 15 years on. "I'm sure there will be some mixed emotions around." Director Rob Sarkies, originally from Dunedin, commented: "After working closely for more than five years with many of the Pike River families it's gratifying to be sharing the first glimpse of the film. I hope Pike River will give New Zealanders an insight into the determination of these families and an understanding of what they went through, and why. "Melanie and Robyn have done an extraordinary job capturing Anna and Sonya's inspiring friendship that transformed them into leaders for their community." — Greymouth Star
Sydney Morning Herald
5 days ago
- Entertainment
- Sydney Morning Herald
15 unmissable movies at this year's Sydney Film Festival
The 72nd Sydney Film Festival has a dizzying number of screenings. Films from 70 countries – all the way from Afghanistan to Zambia – will run in the grand State Theatre and nine other venues around the city. The opening night will be spicier than expected. Given its success at the Sundance Film Festival, where it sold for a record $26 million after a bidding war, there was already keen interest in Michael Shanks' Australian horror film Together, which stars American couple Dave Franco and Alison Brie. Then it ran into controversy when a New York production company filed a lawsuit claiming it was a 'blatant rip-off' of a 2023 comic romance - a claim the American agent for the Together team has described as 'frivolous and without merit'. A jury headed by Australian director Justin Kurzel will judge the 12 films in the $60,000 official competition for 'audacious, courageous and cutting-edge' cinema. Here's our guide to festival highlights ... SLANTED Sydney-raised writer-director Amy Wang has been quietly building a career in Los Angeles. Her first feature film, Slanted, is a body horror satire with a touch of The Substance meets Mean Girls about it. In the winner of the narrative feature competition at South by South West, a Chinese-American teenager (Shirley Chen), who is desperate to be a prom queen, goes through 'ethnic modification' surgery to become white. It promises timely observations about body image, sexism and racism. BLUE MOON With Dazed and Confused, the Before Sunrise trilogy, School of Rock, Boyhood and Apollo 10½, director Richard Linklater is a brilliant chronicler of charming American stories. His latest film is what IndieWire calls 'a razor-sharp biopic' about struggling lyricist Lorenz Hart (Ethan Hawke) on the night his former writing partner Richard Rodgers (Andrew Scott) triumphantly opens Oklahoma! Hart calls a young Yale student (Margaret Qualley) his writing protegee. Loading VIDEOHEAVEN Growing up in Pennsylvania, filmmaker Alex Ross Perry (Listen Up Philip) worked at Suncoast Video. After graduating from New York University, he worked at Kim's Video in Manhattan. So a documentary about the history and culture of video stores that has taken a decade to make is very much a passion project. Narrated by Maya Hawke, it sounds like an entertaining and thoughtful three hours of nostalgia. IT WAS JUST AN ACCIDENT Iranian dissident director Jafar Panahi has paid a heavy price for courageously making films. Imprisoned several times, he was officially banned from making films and travelling outside the country until recently. Panahi made this thriller secretly to avoid having the script vetted by Iran's Ministry of Islamic Guidance. An emotional rollercoaster that starts with a family having an accident while driving on a remote road, it won the Palme d'Or, the top prize, in a strong Cannes competition last weekend. ORWELL: 2 + 2 = 5 Haiti's Raoul Peck is best known for the masterful I Am Not Your Negro, a ferocious, racially charged documentary about American novelist James Baldwin. In this equally political documentary, Peck draws parallels between George Orwell's classic dystopian novel 1984, where Big Brother dictates every aspect of life, and Trump's America. With Orwell's writing narrated by Homeland star Damian Lewis, it uses archival footage and clips from movies and TV news. Deadline called it 'an urgent, indispensable film for our times'. Jodie Foster speaks pitch-perfect French as a psychiatrist drawn into a mystery when one of her patients dies suddenly. This upmarket psychological thriller, warmly reviewed overseas, is from French filmmaker Rebecca Zlotowski. She has surrounded her American star with a strong French cast including Daniel Auteuil as her ex-husband and Mathieu Amalric as the late patient's grieving husband. ONE TO ONE: JOHN & YOKO Restored vision of the 1972 One to One charity fundraising concert that John Lennon and Yoko Ono co-ordinated in New York, performing alongside the likes of Stevie Wonder and Roberta Flack, is the centre of a documentary The Hollywood Reporter has called 'a stone-cold brilliant fusion of kinetic and contemplative'. Oscar-winning director Kevin Macdonald (Touching The Void, The Last King of Scotland) and editor/co-director Sam Rice-Edwards (The Rescue) revisit an eventful time in the couple's post-Beatles life, using audio and video from personal and public archives. THE PRESIDENT'S CAKE This comic drama set in Saddam Hussein's Iraq was hailed as a warm-hearted, crowd-pleasing gem when it screened in Cannes. The debut film for Iraqi director Hasan Hadi centres on nine-year-old Lamia (Banin Ahmad Nayef), who wins the questionable prize of having to bake a cake for the dictator's birthday. She sets off to Baghdad to find ingredients with her beloved pet rooster Hindi and her grandma, Bibi (Waheed Thabet Khreibat). 2000 METRES TO ANDRIIVKA Ukrainian director Mstyslav Chernov won an Oscar last year for the documentary 20 Days in Mariupol, which was about the first weeks of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. This time he follows a Ukrainian platoon attempting to liberate a Russian-occupied village. A jury at a Danish documentary festival called it 'a masterpiece in filmmaking: a haunting, multilayered portrayal of war comparable to All Quiet On The Western Front '. COME SEE ME IN THE GOOD LIGHT Director Ryan White, who made the wonderful Mars rover film Good Night Oppy, follows a Colorado couple - spoken word artist Andrea Gibson, who has incurable ovarian cancer, and poet Megan Falley - for a documentary that won a festival favourite award at Sundance. Noting that it is about grief, joy, heartache and love, POV magazine said that calling it 'deeply moving is an understatement'. Loading THE LIFE OF CHUCK Tom Hiddleston stars as the mysterious Charles 'Chuck' Krantz in an emotional end-of-days sci-fi film told in reverse. Adapted from a quirky Stephen King novella and directed by Mike Flanagan (The Haunting Of Hill House), it won the people's choice award at the Toronto International Film Festival. The strong cast includes Mark Hamill, Karen Gillan and Chiwetel Ejiofor. DANGEROUS ANIMALS Directed by Sean Byrne (The Loved Ones), this Australian horror film with echoes of Wolf Creek was a surprising Directors' Fortnight selection at Cannes but was warmly reviewed. Jai Courtney plays a shark-obsessed serial killer, Tucker, who abducts a resourceful American surfer, Zephyr (Hassie Harrison), in a gory romp screening in the festival's Freak Me Out program. MY FATHER'S SHADOW British-Nigerian director Akinola Davies jnr's semi-autobiographical drama follows two young brothers, Akin (Godwin Egbo) and Remi (Chibuike Marvellous Egbo), during a chaotic day in Lagos, Nigeria. Their estranged father Folarin (Sope Dirisu) takes them into the city as an election promises hopeful changes for the country. Deadline described it as 'one of the most moving and universally relevant and emotional films' at Cannes. MISTRESS DISPELLER Mistress Wang has a role in Chinese romantic relationships that seems fascinating to outsiders. In Hong Kong filmmaker Elizabeth Lo's documentary, the so-called mistress dispeller is hired by a Chinese woman who wants to break up her husband's affair to save her marriage. IndieWire said the film revealed 'a profound and searching panorama of loneliness and partnership, where everyone gets a chance to be heard'. Brazilian director Kleber Mendonca Filho, who won the festival competition with Aquarius in 2016, won best director and actor at Cannes for this stylish political thriller set during the country's military dictatorship in 1977. Wagner Moura plays mild-mannered Marcelo, working undercover in a film the BBC said 'bursts with sex and shootouts, sleazy hitmen and vintage cars'. Like the Oscar-winning I'm Still Here, set during the same period, it's about the brutality of political tyranny.
The Age
5 days ago
- Entertainment
- The Age
15 unmissable movies at this year's Sydney Film Festival
The 72nd Sydney Film Festival has a dizzying number of screenings. Films from 70 countries – all the way from Afghanistan to Zambia – will run in the grand State Theatre and nine other venues around the city. The opening night will be spicier than expected. Given its success at the Sundance Film Festival, where it sold for a record $26 million after a bidding war, there was already keen interest in Michael Shanks' Australian horror film Together, which stars American couple Dave Franco and Alison Brie. Then it ran into controversy when a New York production company filed a lawsuit claiming it was a 'blatant rip-off' of a 2023 comic romance - a claim the American agent for the Together team has described as 'frivolous and without merit'. A jury headed by Australian director Justin Kurzel will judge the 12 films in the $60,000 official competition for 'audacious, courageous and cutting-edge' cinema. Here's our guide to festival highlights ... SLANTED Sydney-raised writer-director Amy Wang has been quietly building a career in Los Angeles. Her first feature film, Slanted, is a body horror satire with a touch of The Substance meets Mean Girls about it. In the winner of the narrative feature competition at South by South West, a Chinese-American teenager (Shirley Chen), who is desperate to be a prom queen, goes through 'ethnic modification' surgery to become white. It promises timely observations about body image, sexism and racism. BLUE MOON With Dazed and Confused, the Before Sunrise trilogy, School of Rock, Boyhood and Apollo 10½, director Richard Linklater is a brilliant chronicler of charming American stories. His latest film is what IndieWire calls 'a razor-sharp biopic' about struggling lyricist Lorenz Hart (Ethan Hawke) on the night his former writing partner Richard Rodgers (Andrew Scott) triumphantly opens Oklahoma! Hart calls a young Yale student (Margaret Qualley) his writing protegee. Loading VIDEOHEAVEN Growing up in Pennsylvania, filmmaker Alex Ross Perry (Listen Up Philip) worked at Suncoast Video. After graduating from New York University, he worked at Kim's Video in Manhattan. So a documentary about the history and culture of video stores that has taken a decade to make is very much a passion project. Narrated by Maya Hawke, it sounds like an entertaining and thoughtful three hours of nostalgia. IT WAS JUST AN ACCIDENT Iranian dissident director Jafar Panahi has paid a heavy price for courageously making films. Imprisoned several times, he was officially banned from making films and travelling outside the country until recently. Panahi made this thriller secretly to avoid having the script vetted by Iran's Ministry of Islamic Guidance. An emotional rollercoaster that starts with a family having an accident while driving on a remote road, it won the Palme d'Or, the top prize, in a strong Cannes competition last weekend. ORWELL: 2 + 2 = 5 Haiti's Raoul Peck is best known for the masterful I Am Not Your Negro, a ferocious, racially charged documentary about American novelist James Baldwin. In this equally political documentary, Peck draws parallels between George Orwell's classic dystopian novel 1984, where Big Brother dictates every aspect of life, and Trump's America. With Orwell's writing narrated by Homeland star Damian Lewis, it uses archival footage and clips from movies and TV news. Deadline called it 'an urgent, indispensable film for our times'. Jodie Foster speaks pitch-perfect French as a psychiatrist drawn into a mystery when one of her patients dies suddenly. This upmarket psychological thriller, warmly reviewed overseas, is from French filmmaker Rebecca Zlotowski. She has surrounded her American star with a strong French cast including Daniel Auteuil as her ex-husband and Mathieu Amalric as the late patient's grieving husband. ONE TO ONE: JOHN & YOKO Restored vision of the 1972 One to One charity fundraising concert that John Lennon and Yoko Ono co-ordinated in New York, performing alongside the likes of Stevie Wonder and Roberta Flack, is the centre of a documentary The Hollywood Reporter has called 'a stone-cold brilliant fusion of kinetic and contemplative'. Oscar-winning director Kevin Macdonald (Touching The Void, The Last King of Scotland) and editor/co-director Sam Rice-Edwards (The Rescue) revisit an eventful time in the couple's post-Beatles life, using audio and video from personal and public archives. THE PRESIDENT'S CAKE This comic drama set in Saddam Hussein's Iraq was hailed as a warm-hearted, crowd-pleasing gem when it screened in Cannes. The debut film for Iraqi director Hasan Hadi centres on nine-year-old Lamia (Banin Ahmad Nayef), who wins the questionable prize of having to bake a cake for the dictator's birthday. She sets off to Baghdad to find ingredients with her beloved pet rooster Hindi and her grandma, Bibi (Waheed Thabet Khreibat). 2000 METRES TO ANDRIIVKA Ukrainian director Mstyslav Chernov won an Oscar last year for the documentary 20 Days in Mariupol, which was about the first weeks of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. This time he follows a Ukrainian platoon attempting to liberate a Russian-occupied village. A jury at a Danish documentary festival called it 'a masterpiece in filmmaking: a haunting, multilayered portrayal of war comparable to All Quiet On The Western Front '. COME SEE ME IN THE GOOD LIGHT Director Ryan White, who made the wonderful Mars rover film Good Night Oppy, follows a Colorado couple - spoken word artist Andrea Gibson, who has incurable ovarian cancer, and poet Megan Falley - for a documentary that won a festival favourite award at Sundance. Noting that it is about grief, joy, heartache and love, POV magazine said that calling it 'deeply moving is an understatement'. Loading THE LIFE OF CHUCK Tom Hiddleston stars as the mysterious Charles 'Chuck' Krantz in an emotional end-of-days sci-fi film told in reverse. Adapted from a quirky Stephen King novella and directed by Mike Flanagan (The Haunting Of Hill House), it won the people's choice award at the Toronto International Film Festival. The strong cast includes Mark Hamill, Karen Gillan and Chiwetel Ejiofor. DANGEROUS ANIMALS Directed by Sean Byrne (The Loved Ones), this Australian horror film with echoes of Wolf Creek was a surprising Directors' Fortnight selection at Cannes but was warmly reviewed. Jai Courtney plays a shark-obsessed serial killer, Tucker, who abducts a resourceful American surfer, Zephyr (Hassie Harrison), in a gory romp screening in the festival's Freak Me Out program. MY FATHER'S SHADOW British-Nigerian director Akinola Davies jnr's semi-autobiographical drama follows two young brothers, Akin (Godwin Egbo) and Remi (Chibuike Marvellous Egbo), during a chaotic day in Lagos, Nigeria. Their estranged father Folarin (Sope Dirisu) takes them into the city as an election promises hopeful changes for the country. Deadline described it as 'one of the most moving and universally relevant and emotional films' at Cannes. MISTRESS DISPELLER Mistress Wang has a role in Chinese romantic relationships that seems fascinating to outsiders. In Hong Kong filmmaker Elizabeth Lo's documentary, the so-called mistress dispeller is hired by a Chinese woman who wants to break up her husband's affair to save her marriage. IndieWire said the film revealed 'a profound and searching panorama of loneliness and partnership, where everyone gets a chance to be heard'. Brazilian director Kleber Mendonca Filho, who won the festival competition with Aquarius in 2016, won best director and actor at Cannes for this stylish political thriller set during the country's military dictatorship in 1977. Wagner Moura plays mild-mannered Marcelo, working undercover in a film the BBC said 'bursts with sex and shootouts, sleazy hitmen and vintage cars'. Like the Oscar-winning I'm Still Here, set during the same period, it's about the brutality of political tyranny.
