In Film Australia - all about Australian films

A suspenseful political thriller, Balibo revisits events surrounding the disappearance of five Australian journalists during Indonesia’s invasion of East Timor in 1975. The story is told through the eyes of a sixth Australian, Roger East (Anthony LaPaglia), who travels to Indonesia a couple of weeks later to head the East Timor News Agency at the [...]

It can’t be easy winning Cannes’ Palme d’Or with your first short film. How do you top that? Glendyn Ivin’s Cracker Bag took home the top prize in 2003 and this year his feature film debut Last Ride confirms the promise we saw back then and establishes Ivin as a talent to watch.

The biennial Adelaide Film Festival is not – like Rotterdam or Pusan – a festival of world premieres, but rather a collection of select titles from the international circuit. One exception is the Australian program: thanks in part to the Festival’s own film fund, a number of high profile local titles have their first outing [...]

It’s not often that an Australian film opens a major international film festival, but I can think of very few films  more deserving than Adam Elliot’s Mary and Max of opening Sundance. Fiercely independent and intensely personal, this is an emotionally affecting tale of friendship that just happens to be crafted entirely out of clay.

In an industry dominated by blockbuster produce and global media campaigns, every Australian film inevitably fights tooth-and-nail to find screens and draw audiences. So what can distributors do to better promote local work? Discussing the marketing of features such as Baz Luhrmann’s long-hyped Australia, Matt Ravier proposes some potential solutions.

For Newcastle’s working class 17 year-olds, the Junior Surf Pro final is a ticket to better things. In the case of Jesse (Lachlan Buchanan), a career beyond the coal barges where his father Reggie (Shane Jacobson) and older half-brother Victor (Reshad Strik) slave away.

Matt Ravier reports from the 2008 Sydney Film Festival. Three Blind Mice is a confident and extremely promising debut for writer-director Matthew Newton and a treasure trove of local talent, both fresh and firmly established.

Most people I know (and read) seem to spend more time moaning about Australian cinema than actually watching it. Currently on our screens is Cactus, an accessible and entertaining road movie