Concrete Playground

The Sydney Film Festival has been officially unleashed. That means it’ll soon be time to once again take up residence in the State Theatre, to brave the cold and the inevitable rain to catch a glimpse of red carpet glitterati, to marvel at the packed lunches brought by the blue-rinse set and, of course, to try and cram in as many handpicked cinematic gems as your budget/boss/bum numbness will allow.

Mecca for Sydney cinephiles, this year’s festival is stacked with over 150 films from 47 countries. It’s most exciting to see opening night honours return to an Australian film with the world premiere of South Solitary. Shirley Barrett’s period drama stars father/daughter duo Barry and Miranda Otto, playing an uncle and niece who move out onto a remote island. Other anticipated local titles include the western Red Hill, with its buzz from the Berlinale, Radha Mitchell and Joel Edgerton in the Indian adoption story The Waiting City and The Tree, a French-Australian film (starring the gorgeous Charlotte Gainsbourg) that will be fresh from closing night prestige at Cannes.

Now in its third year, the festival’s official competition will see 12 films vying for the increasingly illustrious Blue Pavlova, as well as a tidy $60,000 prize money. In the running to be the most, "courageous, audacious and cutting edge" are such titles as Michael Winterbottom’s divisive The Killer Inside Me, the singular Todd Solondz’s Life During Wartime and Chris Morris’s absolutely outrageous-looking jihadist comedy Four Lions. Prizes are also up for grabs for documentaries and short films, each with an impressive lineup of contestants. Locally anticipated is the Australian doco Cane Toads: The Conquest, which is shot in glorious 3D.

Once again, the festival has divided the program into experiential sections: Make Me Laugh, Fire Me Up, Freak Me Out, Love Me, Push Me to the Edge and Take Me on a Journey. These may or may prove helpful to audiences trying to wade through the hefty program, but in amongst it all are some fascinating films. There’s the truly sublime-looking I am Love (no guesses for the category), the impossibly endearing Babies, the controversial Roman Polanski’s The Ghost Writer, Stellan Skarsgård in the Norwegian crime comedy A Somewhat Gentle Man and an out-of-this-world documentary, Space Tourists.

It goes without saying that there are many, many more titles besides, including a vampire retrospective, kids films, restored classics and Sounds on Screen. So to make the most of all the films, talks and visiting luminaries, Sydneysiders should bookmark the festival website, download the iPhone app or seek out a hard copy to pour over, highlighter in hand, old school.