CENTREPIECE

Loveless, winner of the Jury Prize at this year’s 70th Cannes Film Festival, directed by acclaimed Golden Globe Winner and Academy Award® nominated Andrey Zvyagintsev.  Filmmaker Andrey Zvyagintsev (our Retrospective in Focus) follows an estranged couple’s desperate hunt to find their neglected child set against a backdrop of modern Russia’s politics, oppression and corruption.

Somewhere in suburban Moscow, a marriage is in its death throes. Angry, embittered and frustrated, Zhenya (Maryana Spivak) and Boris (Alexey Rozin) have come to the end of their long and toxic road together. Their relationship has soured, however, they are still miserably shackled together in the family apartment until the divorce is finalised. Caught in the middle of this nightmare is their 12-year-old son Alyosha (Matvey Novikov), unsupervised, neglected, and fully aware of his parents’ feelings, one day Alyosha simply disappears without a trace. It falls to his estranged parents to work together and lead a search for the runaway boy, which takes them on a painful journey into their own past.

Loveless is the final film in our RETROSPECTIVE of master filmmaker Zvyagintsev’s works and is a must-see film.

 

SHOWCASES

Four festival Showcases present and celebrate the best in contemporary world cinema with films from Hungary, Vietnam, France and Iran. The first of the Festival’s four Showcases is On Body and Soul (Teströl és lélekröl), directed by Hungary’s Ildiko Enyedi, which won the Golden Bear award for best film at the 67th Berlin International Film Festival, 2017, and recently the Sydney Film Prize at the Sydney Film festival. The second showcase, from legendary director Agnès Varda, comes Faces Places (Visages Villages), winner of the Golden Eye Documentary Prize, 70th Cannes Film Festival, 2017. Eighty-nine year old Varda, who was central to the French New Wave film movement, joins creative and intellectual forces with renowned street artist JR (33-years old) to explore the nooks and crannies of rural France in JR’s van travelling through the backroads of France’s beautiful countryside.   24 Frames is the final film from the celebrated Iranian master filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami, which had its world premiere at this year’s 70th Cannes Film Festival.  24 Frames is just one of the many invaluable legacies of one of the greatest artists of the modern world.  The fourth showcase is the Australian premiere of The Way Station by Vietnamese director and Festival guest Pham Thi Hong Anh.  This haunting, seductive and intense drama won Best Film, Best Actor and Best Cinematography at the 2017:  Asean International Film Festival and Awards. Hong Anh is highly influenced by Hong Kong director Wong Kar-Wai and is one of Vietnam’s leading actresses.  Her sumptuous debut centres around a crumbling, isolated restaurant and the different lives of those who live and work there, all from disparate origins and gathered in this little village by the sea.