The 2024 Sydney Film Festival has drawn to a close, which means awards have been distributed, and with the prize pool for winning films larger than ever, standing at $200,000, it is more important than ever. The festival has been described as an “extraordinary success” by the CEO Frances Wallace, commenting on the over 400 screenings the festival offered, nearly 150 of which were sold out!
The biggest winner of the festival was Paolo Cortellesi. “There’s Still Tomorrow” was the big winner of the night, receiving $60,000 on top of its very successful box office run in Italy. Bosnian director and producer Danis Tanovic oversaw the Jury as predisent, and described the tragicomedy set in post-war 1940s Italy as “audacious, cutting-edge and courageous”. Cortellesi also stars in the film as the wife of an abusive husband looking to break free from her constrained life with the engagement of daughter Marcella to the son of a well-to-do family. Class tensions and issues with a patriarchal system are but a few of the issues this complex piece explores and it is one to add to film fan’s watchlist.
Whilst “There’s Still Tomorrow” may have taken home the most major of awards, beating out stiff competition including Yorgos Lanthimos’ “Kinds of Kindness.” $20,000 was given to documentary director James Bradley for his film “Welcome to Bable” about a Chinese-Australian artist, Jiawei Shen, as he prepared to create a work of epic proportions. Another documentary, “Black Snow,” about Siberian eco-activist Alina Simone, also struck gold as the 2024 recipient of the Sustainable Future Award and the $40,000 prize that comes with it.
The first recipient of the First Nations Award for Indigenous filmmaking went to New Zealand filmmaker Awanui Simich-Pene for “First Horse,” a short period film that follows a young Maori girl facing a rapidly changing world gripped by colonialization. Other winners of the short film winners included Nathan and Nick Lacey’s “Die Bully Die,” which was awarded Best Live Action Short, “Darwin Story” by Natasha Tonkin, which won the Animation Award. And “The Meaningless Daydreams of Augie & Celeste,” for which filmmaker Pernell Marsden was presented the best director award.
Finally, Chloe Kemp won the AFTRS craft award for best practitioner for her screenwriting work on “Say.” Bridget Morrison, the lead of the film, was awarded the Event Cinemas Rising Talent award—both receiving $7,000, and New South Wales-based filmmaker and producer Debbie Lee was the recipient of the Sydney-UNESCO city film award.
