Léa Seydoux and George MacKay’s fatal attraction endures across space and time in Bertrand Bonello’s audacious Lynchian reflection on love and obsession, mixing sci-fi, melodrama, and horror across three different time frames.
Festival Programme
Films — by Language
French
Cuckoo
Equal parts picturesque, creepy and batshit crazy, with a stunning performance from Euphoria’s Hunter Schafer in her first feature lead role, this riotous horror flick proves to be raucously entertaining and refreshingly unpredictable.
Dahomey
In 2021, 26 plundered artefacts from the Kingdom of Dahomey are returned to the modern day nation of Benin. Mati Diop’s dreamlike documentary skilfully examines the debate surrounding the repatriation of stolen cultural treasures.
Grand Tour
A runaway groom with his bride-to-be in hot pursuit takes us on an epic tour through colonial-era Asia in Miguel Gomes’s playful Cannes prize-winner which mingles the artificiality of classic cinema with a documentary sense of place.
Green Border
Zielona granica
Brutal, enraging and heartrending, Polish writer-director Agnieszka Holland’s controversial take on the Polish-Belarusian border crisis serves as a startling call to arms in the face of a little-seen humanitarian crisis.
Humanist Vampire Seeking Consenting Suicidal Person
Vampire humaniste cherche suicidaire consentant
A sensitive vampire meets a depressed teenage boy in this deadpan romantic comedy about two loners connecting.
Menus-Plaisirs - Les Troisgros
A quietly diligent examination of a family-run three-star Michelin restaurant in France, revealing minute details of a sprawling ecosystem as it unobtrusively traverses kitchens, dining rooms, suppliers, markets, cheese caves, farms, vineyards, and apiaries.
Never Look Away
Lucy Lawless makes her directorial debut with a raucous documentary exploring the life of another warrior princess – fierce and fearless Kiwi war video journalist Margaret Moth.
Soundtrack to a Coup d'Etat
An electrifying assemblage of sound and image tells the story of a CIA-backed cold war coup in Congo – and the American jazz musicians weaponised in its cause.