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SXSW on Monday said that Matthew Shear’s Fantasy Life, Ben Affleck and Jon Bernthal’s reteam The Accountant 2 and Paige Bethmann’s documentary Remaining Native were among the big winners of the 32nd annual festival’s Audience Awards.

The news of the honors across the Austin fest’s competition, narrative, documentary, shorts, TV and Xr Experience sidebars comes after the 2025 edition revealed its juried awards last week, with honors going to Amy Wang‘s thriller Slanted for Best Narrative Feature among others.

Fantasy Life, Shear’s feature writing and directorial debut, won the marquee Narrative Feature Audience Award. It stars Shear as a man who suffers a panic attack and stumbles into a job babysitting his psychiatrist’s three granddaughters, where he begins to fall for the girls’ mother, played by Amanda Peet. Peet earlier won a special jury prize for acting.

The Headliners section audience prize went to The Accountant 2,...

“Bridgerton” star Florence Hunt, Jim Sturgess and Australia’s Teresa Palmer have joined the cast of “Mix Tape,” a music-themed drama series. The Australian-Irish co-production shot in Sydney in May and is now underway in Dublin.

The series is adapted by Irish writer Jo Spain from the popular and critically-acclaimed novel of the same title by Jane Sanderson. It is directed by Australia’s Lucy Gaffy.

“’Mix Tape’ will take viewers back in time to that intoxicating feeling of first love [and be] a classic all-encompassing romance set to a banging nostalgic soundtrack,” said producers.

The series is produced by Subotica and Aquarius Films, with Boat Rocker overseeing international distribution. In Australia, it will play on Binge, a streaming service operated by local market pay-tv leader Foxtel.

Palmer will portray Alison and the U.K.’s Sturgess (“Cloud Atlas”) plays Daniel, two friends now living on opposite sides of the planet, who...

Extraordinary Host

Korean actors Lee Je Hoon and Park Eun-bin, star of “Extraordinary Attorney Woo,” are set as hosts of the opening ceremony at the Busan International Film Festival. The event will take place on the evening of Oct. 4 at the purpose-built Busan Cinema Center.

Park performed as the first cross-dressing queen in a Korean historical drama with “The King’s Affection” in 2021 and cemented her position as the lead of hit contemporary drama series “Extraordinary Attorney Woo.”

Lee emerged as a rising star with his intense performances in films such as “Bleak Night “(2011), “The Front Line” (2011) and “Architecture 101” (2012). Following that, he showcased a broad range of acting skills in various genres, as seen in films “Anarchist From Colony” (2017), “I Can Speak” (2017) and “Time to Hunt.”

The pair previously shared the screen in the 2014 drama series “Secret Door.“

The festival runs Oct. 4-13.

Mix Tape Memories

Binge, the streaming arm of Australian pay-tv group Foxtel,...

Close To The Edge

Thomasin McKenzie and Devon Terrell (“Rap Shit”) star in “Totally Completely Fine,” a series co-production between Sundance Now and Australia’s Stan, which has now started production in Sydney. McKenzie plays a young woman whose life was a mess even before she inherited her grandfather’s coastal clifftop house and became tasked with helping people who come too close to the edge. Strangely though people respond to her chaotic, nihilistic brand of psychology. The series was created and is executive produced by Gretel Vella, who co-wrote the show with Keir Wilkins (“Surviving Summer”) and Emme Hoy (stage play “The Tenant of Wildfell Hall”). The series is produced at Fremantle Australia by Alice Willison (“The Other Guy”), with Nat Lindwall as executive producer. The series is directed by Lucy Gaffy with Adrian Chiarella (“Dwarf Planet”) directing episode four. It is financed with the assistance of Screen Nsw...

AMC Networks’ streaming platform Sundance Now is expanding its 2023 slate with orders for two new series, dark comedy Totally Completely Fine and fantasy mystery series Sanctuary, based on V.V. James novel. They join the recently announced upcoming series Clean Sweep, The Lovers, SisterS, Black Snow, and Far North, all for premiere in 2023.

Inspired by true events, six-part dark comedy Totally Completely Fine, a Sundance Now Original series, stars Thomasin McKenzie (JoJo Rabbit) and explores the complexities of grief, the power of friendship, and the ways our sadness can unite us. Per the logline, the series follows 20-something Vivian Cunningham (McKenzie), whose life is a mess. Last week she accidentally burnt down her brother’s vegan food truck with a bacon-flavored vape and this week she’s inherited her grandfather’s coastal clifftop shack and is tasked with helping people who come too close to the edge.

Series also stars Devon Terrell (Rap Sh!

For Robert Rabiah, Queensland’s Mission Beach is more than just the location where he is filming fish-out-of-water drama Irreverent – it’s also where he began his career.

The actor’s first professional job was appearing alongside Craig McLachlan, Nadine Garner, and Antonio Sabato Jr. in George Miller’s action/adventure mini-series Tribe, which was also based in the coastal town.

Speaking to If, Rabiah said his role in the Matchbox Pictures/NBCUniversal International Studios’ series more than two decades later was a case of his journey coming full circle.

“To come back after all these years feels nostalgic and satisfying,” he said.

In Irreverent, Rabiah plays Farah, a menacing hitman sent by the Chicago Mob to settle the ledger with a criminal mediator (Colin Donnell) who has taken refuge in Far North Queensland and assumed the identity of a church reverend.

Created by Paddy Macrae, the 10-part series also...

A French comedy following an oddball duo on an unconventional road trip and an Australian documentary about four refugees that compete in the World Wine Blind Tasting Championships have topped the audience awards at this year’s Sydney Film Festival.

Bernard Campan and Alexandre Jollien’s Beautiful Minds and Robert Coe and Warwick Ross’ Blind Ambition were voted number one feature film and documentary respectively, following the announcement of the official awards on Sunday.

Inspired by the real-life experiences of Jollien, Beautiful Minds details an unlikely friendship between workaholic funeral director Louis (Campan) and Igor (Jollien), a grocery worker with cerebral palsy, as a chance encounter leads them on a journey across France, during which they discuss everything from Nietzsche to being pigeon-holed.

France also features heavily in Blind Ambition as the setting for World Wine Blind Tasting Championships that Zimbabweans Joseph, Tinashe, Marlvin, and Pardon set out to attend.

Emerging writers show promise, and performances are strong in this multi-story feature which feels limited by its own format

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Here Out West begins with the grandmother of a newborn baby nicking off with the bub – kidnapping the child from hospital after authorities deemed her daughter unfit to care for it. In an ordinary film, this dramatic event would be a MacGuffin that kickstarts the plot and sets the subsequent storyline in motion, sparking obvious questions such as “what was she thinking?” and “what happens next?”

However in this anthology (the opening night film of this year’s Sydney film festival) directed by Fadia Abboud, Lucy Gaffy, Julie Kalceff, Ana Kokkinos and Leah Purcell, working from scripts by eight Australian writers, it is not so much the start of a narrative but a loose connective tissue binding short and disparate vignettes.

Here Out West, which opens Sydney Film Festival tomorrow evening, is an anthology feature in which a baby being kidnapped from a hospital sets off a series of events that brings complete strangers together over a single day.

The project is the result of Co-Curious’ Behind Closed Doors initiative, a two year development program designed to connect new voices to experienced talent, backed by Screen Australia and Screen Nsw.

The script was written by eight emerging writers from Western Sydney, Nisrine Amine, Bina Bhattacharya, Matias Bolla, Claire Cao, Arka Das, Dee Dogan, Vonne Patiag and Tien Tran, and the film directed by Ana Kokkinos, Leah Purcell, Julie Kalceff, Fadia Abboud and Lucy Gaffy.

Newcomers Khoi Trinh, Jaime Ureta and De Lovan Zandy star alongside Das, Geneviève Lemon, Rahel Romahn and Leah Vandenberg.

Annabel Davis from Co-Curious and Bree-Anne Sykes produce the film, alongside Emerald Productions’ Sheila Jayadev. Blake Ayshford, Lyn Norfor...

With Nsw reopening for the fully vaccinated, Sydney Film Festival is set to finally go ahead, with a line-up that director Nashen Moodley believes is one the most diverse and exciting in the event’s 68-year history.

Traditionally held in June, this year has seen the festival pushed back twice, initially to August, and then November.

Yet when the Delta outbreak nixed the August edition, it was unclear that the festival would realistically be held at all. Indeed, Sff will mark the first major festival event to occur in Sydney’s CBD post-lockdown, a notion that fills Moodley with “excitement but trepidation”.

The move to November meant the festival was tasked with reconfirming every title that had been programmed so far. Overall, it lost about 20 films, but gained almost 30, including some of the year’s most anticipated out of Venice and Toronto.

Among the new additions are Jane Campion’s...

Chicago Med and Arrow star Colin Donnell is to lead Peacock’s Australia-set crime drama Irreverent.

The series, which Deadline revealed last month had scored a straight-to-series order, will also feature Pj Byrne, Kylie Bracknell, Briallen Clarke, Tegan Stimson, Ed Oxenbould, Wayne Blair, Russell Dykstra, Calen Tassone and Jason Wilder as series regulars.

Irreverent follows a criminal from Chicago who bungles a heist and is forced to hide out in a small Australian reef town in Far North Queensland posing as the new church Reverend.

Donnell will play Mack/Paulo, a skilled and articulate mediator who keeps the peace between organized crime families in Chicago. After a mediation goes badly wrong, Mack flees to a remote beach town in tropical Australia where he is forced to assume the identity of a Reverend in order to stay ahead of the people who want him dead.

Created by Paddy Macrae (Wanted), the...

Colin Donnell is trading his scrubs for a slightly different cloth. The former Chicago Med star will lead Peacock’s Irreverent, a co-production between the streamer and Netflix Australia, TVLine has learned.

Irreverent‘s official logline describes it as a “fish out of water drama that follows criminal mediator Paulo Keegan (Donnell) as he flees the United States after a mediation gone wrong and assumes the identity of Reverend Mackenzie ‘Mack’ Boyd. ‘Mack’ finds himself trapped in Clump, Australia — a small, eccentric beach town hundreds of miles away from civilization and phone reception. In order to stay alive, ‘Mack’ must...

Australian talent will be front and centre in Matchbox Pictures/NBCUniversal International Studios’ drama Irreverent when it starts production in Queensland tomorrow.

Kylie Bracknell, Calen Tassone, Briallen Clarke, Tegan Stimson, Ed Oxenbould, Wayne Blair, Russell Dykstra, and Jason Wilder will be series regulars on the Netflix and Peacock co-commission, with Susie Porter, Bridie McKim, Martin Sacks, and Ursula Yovich also set to appear.

Created by Paddy Macrae, Irreverent follows criminal mediator Paulo Keegan (Colin Donnell) as he flees the United States after a mediation gone wrong and assumes the identity of Reverend Mackenzie “Mack” Boyd in Clump, a small, Australian beach town hundreds of miles away from civilization and phone reception.

While there, he encounters Piper (Bracknell), a gifted cop who has returned to her hometown after a successful start to her career in the city, and begins to suspect he isn’t who he says he is. Clarke plays...

Leah Purcell’s The Drover’s Wife The Legend of Molly Johnson, Justin Kurzel’s Nitram, anthology feature drama Here Out West, and Jennifer Peedom’s River will each compete for CinefestOZ’s $100,000 Film Prize.

A jury of industry guests will award the honour at the festival, due to run August 25-29 in Western Australia’s South West hubs of Busselton, Augusta-Margaret River and Bunbury.

CinefestOZ chair Helen Shervington said this year’s finalists reflected the diversity and complexity of storytelling set for this year’s festival.

“I continue to be impressed by the calibre and originality of film submissions to the festival each year, and I’m proud to say the 2021 Film Prize finalists are fantastic,” she said.

“We can’t wait for our audiences to be back at the cinema watching these films – all of which will have their Wa premieres at CinefestOZ.

“The range and creativity shown across...

Ana Kokkinos, Leah Purcell, Julie Kalceff, Fadia Abboud and Lucy Gaffy will helm anthology feature drama Here Out West, penned by eight emerging writers and now shooting in Sydney.

The project is the result of Co-Curious’ Behind Closed Doors initiative, a two year development program designed to connect new voices to experienced talent, backed by Screen Australia and Screen Nsw.

Nisrine Amine, Bina Bhattacharya, Matias Bolla, Claire Cao, Arka Das, Dee Dogan, Vonne Patiag and Tien Tran are the scribes in question, having written a work follows the desperate kidnapping of a baby from hospital; an act that sets off a chain of events that bring together complete strangers over the course of one dramatic day.

Newcomers Khoi Trinh, Jaime Ureta and De Lovan Zandy will star alongside Das, Geneviève Lemon, Rahel Romahn and Leah Vandenberg.

Selected via a competitive application process, the eight writers worked with writer-producer Blake Ayshford...

Anya Beyersdorf.

Prolific screenwriter Anya Beyersdorf says her excitement level has gone through the roof as she collaborates with director Rachel Ward on one of the segments of the ABC’s female-driven Shakespeare Now anthology.

Enjoying a career high, Beyersdorf is also working on an Every Cloud Productions’ drama and developing multiple projects with writer-director Miranda Nation, Aquarius Films, Truant Pictures and US director Alexis Ostrander.

“I have had a privileged, lucky lockdown,” she tells If. “I think I would have gone mad if I didn’t have all these scripts and virtual writers’ rooms. It’s kept me connected and doing meaningful things.”

Hoodlum Entertainment and Margot Robbie’s LuckyChap Entertainment are developing Shakespeare Now, consisting of fresh re-interpretations of Romeo and Juliet, The Tempest, Macbeth, Love’s Labour’s Lost, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Richard III, The Merchant of Venice and Twelfth Night.

“Rachel is such a generous, clever, cool woman,...

Sophie Hyde, pictured here on the set of ‘Animals’, has been nominated for two Adg Awards.

First-time feature directors Thomas Wright (Acute Misfortune), John Sheedy (H is for Happiness), Ben Lawrence (Hearts and Bones) and Natalie Erika James (Relic) will vie for the Australian Directors’ Guild (Adg) Award for Best Direction in a Feature Film ($1 million or over) against Sophie Hyde (Animals) and Wayne Blair (Top End Wedding).

Up in the $1 million or under category are Josephine Mackerras for Alice, Imogen Thomas for Emu Runner, Lucy Colman for Hot Mess, Luke Sullivan for Reflections In The Dust and Samuel Van Grinsven for Sequin In A Blue Room.

The Adg announced nominees for its annual awards today, with winners to be announced in Sydney at a ceremony October 19. A record 202 entries were received this year, up from 117 in 2019.

“At these challenging times, it is more important than ever that we come...

Natesha Somasundaram.

Growing up in Parramatta as the daughter of South Asian parents, Natesha Somasundaram never saw people like her on television.

She blames that invisibility for making it tough to develop a sense of her own identity – until she started writing for a living several years ago.

Her Sri Lankan Tamil parents emigrated to Australia in the late 1980s to escape the country’s civil war. “We grew up in a predominantly white area and I was the only person of colour at my school level,” she tells If.

“I had a very difficult time navigating my identity. I decided I never wanted to be associated with Sri Lanka or its culture. I shut that out of my system until the past couple of years as a writer when I reconnected with my culture.”

Intending initially to be an actor, she did a Bachelor of Performing Arts degree at Monash University,...

‘Ride Like A Girl’, which received development funding via Gender Matters: Brilliant Stories.

Back in December 2015, Screen Australia set itself a three-year target: by the end of the 2018-19 financial year, at least 50 per cent of projects to receive production funding should be from female-led creative teams.

At the same time, the agency rolled out a $5 million suite of initiatives under the umbrella ‘Gender Matters’. Each was designed to redress gender inequity more broadly: a female-led story development fund, Brilliant Stories; female-focused business support, Brilliant Careers; Better Deals, a matched distribution guarantee for the marketing of female-led films; and an attachment scheme for women.

Screen Australia also adjusted its assessment criteria, expressly noting that the gender of a project’s team may influence its funding decisions.

Three years on, and Screen Australia has exceeded its target. Fifty-six (56) per cent of projects funded over the last three years were considered ‘female-led’; that is the writer,...

‘A Field Guide to Being A 12-Year-Old Girl’ (Photo: Nat Rogers)

The Australian Academy of Cinema and Television Arts (Aacta) today launched #SocialShorts, its national online short film competition.

#SocialShorts – this year presented in partnership with Mini – runs for two weeks across Drama, Comedy and Open categories, with the winner of each to be announced July 29. Audiences can watch all participating films on the #SocialShorts website.

Many of the films in this year’s comp have achieved acclaim already, including Shelly Lauman’s Birdie, which was acquired by Fox Searchlight after screening at the Toronto International Film Festival, Julie Kalceff’s First Day, which has been turned into a full series for the ABC, and Tilda Cobham-Hervey’s A Field Guide to Being A 12-Year-Old Girl, which was awarded the Crystal Bear for Best Short Film at Berlinale in 2018.

Corrie Chen, Lucy Gaffy, Mirrah Foulkes, and Luke Eve are this year’s #SocialShorts’ ambassadors,...

Tristram Baumber.

Tristram Baumber studied English and creative writing at the University of Wollongong with the aim of making a living as a screenwriter.

That was 20 years ago. Since then his life and career have taken several twists and turns – but he is now reaping the rewards of persistence and determination.

“It took me a long time to get good at writing,” he tells If. The turning point came in March 2017 when Aquarius Films’ Polly Staniford and Angie Fielder hired him as an in-house writer.

He had been working with the producers on several projects including a rom-com feature and they were able to put him on staff thanks to a grant from Screen Australia’s Enterprise People program.

For the next two years he worked on multiple projects including the second season of Matt Okine’s Stan sitcom The Other Guy and The Unlisted, an action sci-fi thriller created...

‘The Unlisted.’

Netflix has acquired global rights outside Australia to The Unlisted, an action sci-fi thriller which follows two 13-year-old identical twins who team up with a group of underground vigilante to stop a powerful corporation from imposing control over the world’s youth.

Aquarius Films’ Angie Fielder and Polly Staniford are producing the 15-part half-hour series created by Justine Flynn, who is serving as executive producer and directs two episodes.

The ABC commissioned the series last year with funding from Screen Australia and Create Nsw. Toronto-based Sinking Ship Entertainment brokered the deal with Netflix, which becomes co-commissioner.

Discovered by casting director Kirsty McGregor, Ved and Vrund Rao play the twins, Dru and Kal, alongside Miah Madden and Abigail Adriano.

Rhys Graham, Nick Verso, Lucy Gaffy, Neil Sharma and Rebecca O’Brien directed the other episodes. The writers include Mithila Gupta, Timothy Lee, Tristram Baumber, Jane Allen and Greg Waters.

Mairi Cameron.

Mairi Cameron will shadow direct an episode of Hoodlum Entertainment’s Harrow with Geoff Bennett as part of the Australian Directors’ Guild’s (Adg) ongoing shadow directing program for female directors.

The initiative was created by the Adg with funding from Screen Australia’s Gender Matters: Brilliant Careers initiative. Other directors to have completed the program are Lucy Gaffy, Lisa Matthews, Darlene Johnson, Jane Eakin and Rebecca O’Brien.

Cameron’s feature debut The Second was released last year in theatres and on streaming service Stan, was nominated for the Aacta Award for Best Indie Film and Best Feature Film at the Screen Producers Australia Awards. Her 1999 short Milk was also selected for Cannes, and was pre-selected for an Academy Award.

The second season of ABC’s Harrow, which is co-produced with Disney’s ABC Studio’s International and stars Ioan Gruffudd, is shooting at the moment around Brisbane.

Jub Clerc.

All the talk about the need for structural and cultural change in the screen industry must be converted into in widespread action, according to Women in Film & Television (Wift) Australia.

“This year Wift Australia’s focus will be on changing systems,” says board member Megan Riakos on behalf of the board.

“For too long our industry has perpetuated structures that reflect wider gender inequity and disparity. Intersectionality means this hits some harder than others. Although there has been public sentiment that supports change, we believe that talk must be converted into widespread and decisive action.

“We must recognise that we as an Industry have the knowledge, intelligence and creativity to forge transformation. We need to stop asking the most vulnerable to bear the burden of this fight. We must understand that we created this system. It’s not natural. It’s not preordained. It can be changed.

Heath Davis (L) on the set of ‘Locusts.’

Seventy Australian filmmakers have joined a co-operative aimed at supporting each other’s work and fostering awareness of Aussie films.

The initiative is the brainchild of writer-director Heath Davis, who made his debut with Broke, followed by Book Week and, due to open later this year, suspense drama Locusts.

The group started coalescing before Christmas and rapidly gained members among established directors as well as those with one or two features under their belt. The working title is Cinegar Bar (a play on a cigar bar that Davis used to frequent in Vancouver).

He had the idea after talking to veteran cinematographer John Seale, who told him that when he started out, all the DPs knew and supported each other and formed lasting friendships.

Davis contrasted that camaraderie with the current environment for writers-directors, where it is largely a case of ‘every...

Lucy Gaffy with her.Canon Award for Best Direction in an Australian Short Film for 'Dream Baby'.

The 26th annual Flickerfest closed last night with an awards ceremony at Bondi Pavilion, celebrating both international and Australian films..

The award for Best Australian Short Film went to Christopher Sferrazza.s Beast, which had its world premiere at the festival.

Lucy Gaffy took out the award for Best Direction in an Australian Short Film for Dream Baby, following on from the short.s recent Aacta Award.

The award for Best International Short Film went to the Icelandic film.Ungar (Cubs), from writer-director Nanna Kristín Magnúsdóttir..

Flickerfest.s Academy-accredited awards include the Flickerfest Award for Best International Short Film, the Yoram Gross Award for Best International Animation, the Virgin Australia Award for Best Australian Short Film and the Flickerfest Award for Best Documentary Short Film..

.We are thrilled that the 2017 festival...

Female film-makers donned sausage costumes to protest gender disparity in the Australian industry.Scroll down for full list of winners:

Mel Gibson’s Hacksaw Ridge was named best film of the year at the 2016 Australian Academy of Cinema and Television Arts (Aacta) awards, with the wartime drama taking nine of its 13 nominated awards, at an event that was also marked by activism on and off the stage.

Hacksaw Ridge was produced in New South Wales and financed through the Producer Offset and other state and federal government subsidies.

The film’s star Andrew Garfield was named best actor for his portrayal of conscientious objector Desmond Dawes, and Hugo Weaving won best supporting actor (again, after winning in 2015 for The Dressmaker) for his role as Dawes’ battle-scarred father.

Garfield accepted his award via video message from Los Angeles, and expressed “pure joy” at the win. He also singled out “Mel’s brilliant ability to make everyone feel valuable...

Hacksaw Ridge has picked up four Aacta Awards so far..

The first winners of this year.s Aacta Awards were unveiled yesterday at the Aacta Industry Luncheon.

Some 33 awards were presented during the event, celebrating screen craft excellence across features, television, shorts, and documentary. The remainder of the awards will be announced at the 6th Aacta Awards Ceremony on Wednesday evening.

Hacksaw Ridge picked up the most gongs: four from a possible six, including Best Editing, Best Production Design, Best Cinematography and Best Sound. Mel Gibson's film is up for another seven awards, to be presented at Wednesday evening's ceremony..

Composer Antony Partos picked up his sixth AFI/Aacta award for his work on Tanna, while Simon Stone took out Best Adapted Screenplay for his debut feature The Daughter..Girl Asleep's Jonathan Oxlade won Best Costume Design.

The Aacta Award for Best Short Animation was presented to Angie Fielder,...

Chasing Asylum. The first nominees for the 6th Aacta Awards have been announced, with the Australian Academy revealing those up for gongs in three categories: Best Feature Length Documentary, Best Short Animation and Best Short Fiction Film.

Nominees in feature film and television will be named later this year.

Under consideration for Best Feature Documentary is Eva Orner.s expose of Australian offshore detention, Chasing Asylum, and Dan Jackson.s debut In The Shadow of the Hill, which follows locals living in Rio de Janiero.s largest slum and their fight for justice.

They will vie against Nikolas Bird and Eleanor Sharp.s Remembering the Man, about couple Timothy Congriave and John Caleo — whose love story was the subject of feature film Holding the Man, and Snow Monkey, a portrait of daily life in Jalalabad, produced by Lizzette Atkins and directed by artist George Gittoes.

Up for the Best Short Animation gong is Joel Best,...

Short film The Spa was funded in the last ever round of Metro Screen and Screen Nsw's Breaks initiative..

After screening at the Sydney Film Festival.s Dendy Awards for Australian Short Films and the St Kilda Film Festival, The Spa made its international premiere last week at the Palm Springs International Shortfest..

Writer-director Will Goodfellow, a graduate of the 2014 Aftrs Master of Screen Arts program, travelled to Palm Springs with his film. He calls it a "a festival that truly values the filmmaker experience".

Starring Chris Haywood and Jay Laga.aia, the short is a "bittersweet comedy about the unusual bond that forms between a lonely retiree and the spa company employees who deliver his new spa"..

For producer Lucy Gaffy, the success of the film is itself a bittersweet experience as the recent arts funding cuts have seen the closure of Metro Screen, the organisation wholly responsible for making The Spa possible.

Emerging Australian director Lucy Gaffy has been selected as the director's attachment on upcoming Cjz TV drama Bond.

Gaffy, who has directed shorts including Dream Baby, The Gift, The Fence and The Love Song of Iskra Prufrock, will be attached to feature film and TV drama director Mark Joffe on Bond, which is currently in pre-production..

The industry incentive program is funded by Screen Australia and managed by the Adg for emerging directors to develop their craft.

Gaffy said she was excited to work with a filmmaker like Mark Joffe, "a storyteller whom I have so long admired - and deeply grateful to Kingston, Franky and all the marvellous team at the Adg for their continued support of emerging directors."

Gaffy is a Masters graduate of the Australian Film Television and Radio School (Aftrs)..

She has been working in the industry for over seven years across a broad range of productions including short films,...

(L - R) Judy Davis, Adrian Weimers, Nashen Moodley.

The Weinstein Company has shortlisted 21 Australian filmmakers for the Lexus Australian Short Film Fellowship, the largest cash fellowship for short film in Australia.

Judy Davis is presiding over the selection process as jury chair alongside jury members Nashen Moodley (Sydney Film Festival Director) Lexus Australia.s Adrian Weimers, and Australian producers Jan Chapman and Darren Dale..

The jury will select select up to four filmmakers, each of whom will receive a $50,000 Fellowship grant..

The four successful candidates will be announced at the Sydney Film Festival (June 8-19 2016).

The shortlisted filmmakers are:

Alex Murawski (Nsw)

Alex Ryan (Nsw)

Anya Beyersdorf (Nsw)

Billie Pleffer (Nsw)

Brooke Goldfinch (Nsw)

Genevieve Clay-Smith (Nsw)

Hazel Annikki Savolainen (Nsw)

Gene Jacobie Gray (Nsw)

Lucy Gaffy (Nsw)

Tim Russell (Nsw)

Venetia Taylor (Nsw)

Dave Redman (Vic)

David Hansen (Vic)

James Vinson (Vic)

Victoria Thaine (Vic)

Mikey Hill (Vic...

The Aftrs Open Summer School — now in its third year — has expanded to 17 intensive courses, including a new six-week doco school and a six-week film school.

These introductory and intermediate film courses running between November and January are designed for intensive learning and the chance to upskill in the rapidly changing media landscape.

Amongs the screen industry speakers and lecturers are writer/director David Caesar (Nowhere Boys, Underbelly, Dirty Deeds, Mullet), cinematographer Ross Emery (The Wolverine, Woman In Gold, I Frankenstein), TV writer Vicki Madden (The Bill, Water Rats, Blood Brothers, McLeod.s Daughters and Foxtel drama The Kettering Incident), feature film director Elissa Down (The Black Balloon, Offspring) and documentary director/producer Madeleine Heatherton (Call Me Dad, Bondi Rescue, The Nest,. Last Chance Surgery, Outback Truckies).

Also screenwriter Ian David ( Police Crop: The Winchester Conspiracy, Police State, Joh's Jury, Blue Murder, Killing Time, 3 Acts of Murder, The Shark Net,...

The 12th edition of the Melbourne International Film Festival.s Miff Accelerator program provided intensive workshops for 23 directors. Thety included Matthew Richards, Lucy Gaffy, Sarah-Jane Woulahan and Corrie Jones, who participated via Screen Australia.s Hot Shots program, and. Chris Richards-Scully thanks to ScreenWest's West Coast Visions program. The event kicked off. last Thursday with the Miff Accelerator-Screen Australia Talent of Tomorrow Function in association with Lexus Short Films and The Weinstein Company Eighteen participants, who all had shorts screened at Miff 2015,. were Dylan River (Nulla Nulla); Nora Niasari (The Phoenix); Ruby Railey (The Best Way To Kill Your Mother); David White (Killer?); Sanjay de Silva (Maalu); Larissa Behrendt (Under Skin, In Blood), David Hansen (Slingshot); Tess Hutson (Euxine); Ted Wilson (Family Holiday); Isaac Wall (Looking To Buy); Tracey Rigney (Man Real); Jem Rankin (Cherokee); Meelisha Bardolia (Match); Florence Noble (Things Are Going Really Well); Michael Portway (Wawi); Tim Marshall...

Screen Australia has announced this morning the four teams which have been selected for the Hot Shots: Short Fiction Funding program.

The successful projects are A Terrible Beauty, The Disappearance of Willie Bingham, Elvis and Whirlpool. The support from Screen Aus totals at $280,000.

Screen Australia.s Head of Production, Sally Caplan, said, .It is fantastic to see the amount of budding talent we have in this country. We received a lot of applications for this program and wish we had been able to support more. We are pleased to back such a great range of emerging talent with a wide variety of vibrant stories..

A Terrible Beauty is a sci-fi which follows the plight of Olivia, who questions the nature of love after her father destroys the robot, a companion purchased in a bid to replace her dead mother. It comes from writer/director Sarah-Jane Woulahan and is produced by Anna Kojevnikov and Sally Storey.

Female directors have dominated the Documentary Feature category of the 2014 Australian Directors Guild Awards, whilst Home & Away has muscled out any other competition for TV Drama Serial. The nominees, announced this morning, cover 16 categories across film, television, multiplatform, music and advertising. This year has seen the Adg receive more entries than ever before, making the judging process a difficult one. .In the TV drama category, the documentary feature category and the feature film categories especially, the caliber is really high so that.s why there are so many nominations,. says Adg Executive Director Kingston Anderson. .The judges take it very seriously and fully understand the recognition the awards can bring.. In the feature film category, Baz Luhrmann was unsurprisingly nominated for box office hit The Great Gatsby alongside strong contenders Kim Mordaunt (The Rocket), Ivan Sen (Mystery Road), Jonathan Teplitzky (The Railway Man) and Zak Hilditch, whose film These Final Hours,...

Six student short films from the Australian Film Television and Radio School will screen in a specially designated program at the 2012 Cannes Film Festival.

Cinema des Antipodes is an organisation directed by Bernard Bories that screens and supports Australian and New Zealand films in France. Its non-competitive program runs parallel to the Cannes Film Festival main program.

The dedicated Aftrs session consists of six films including writer/director Ben Matthews' Emily, which is currently in the running for a Student Oscar in the Best Foreign Film category. The psychological thriller examines teen suicide from the perspective of a parent.

Meryl Tankard, the creator of the Sydney Olympics opening ceremony also has a film in the program. Moth, which stars Sophie Lowe, is a story inspired by accounts from Australian reform schools in the 60's and 70's..

For a complete list of films, see below:..

Moth Written by Alana Valentine...

If the list of awardees below is long, it’s because the Newport Beach Film Festival screens over 400 films from more than 45 countries. With 50,000 visitors to the festival each year, part of the success of the program is its ability to draw full houses of appreciative audiences.

Opening with Michael C. Hall, Lucy Liu and Peter Fonda in “East Fifth Bliss,” the festival closes with “A Beginner’s Guide to Endings.” “Beginner’s Guide” stars Harvey Keitel as a gambling man at the end of his tether, and his three sons (Scott Caan, Paulo Costanzo and Jason Jones) who soon learn that their father signed them up for unsafe drug tests when they were kids.

In between the go and the whoa were panels on directing, music composition and a master class on screenwriting given by Aaron Sorkin. Oh, and those 400 films. For a highlights list of the films at...

If the list of awardees below is long, it’s because the Newport Beach Film Festival screens over 400 films from more than 45 countries. With 50,000 visitors to the festival each year, part of the success of the program is its ability to draw full houses of appreciative audiences.

Opening with Michael C. Hall, Lucy Liu and Peter Fonda in “East Fifth Bliss,” the festival closes with “A Beginner’s Guide to Endings.” “Beginner’s Guide” stars Harvey Keitel as a gambling man at the end of his tether, and his three sons (Scott Caan, Paulo Costanzo and Jason Jones) who soon learn that their father signed them up for unsafe drug tests when they were kids.

In between the go and the whoa were panels on directing, music composition and a master class on screenwriting given by Aaron Sorkin. Oh, and those 400 films. For a highlights list of the films at...

The line-up for the 2010 Telluride Film Festival has been announced and there are some exciting inclusions. If I were attending Telluride, the two films at the top of my must-see list would be Errol Morris’ new documentary Tabloid which is about former-Miss Wyoming/convicted rapist/dog-cloning advocate Joyce McKinney, and Peter Weir’s war film The Way Back, which is the director’s first film since 2003’s Master and Commander.

The line-up also includes other films that are making the festival rounds including Mark Romanek’s Never Let Me Go, the financial-collapse documentary Inside Job, Alejandro González Iñárritu’s Biutiful, Sylvain Chomet’s The Illusionist, Mike Leigh’s Another Year, and Stephen Frears’ Tamara Drewe. Hit the jump to check out the full line-up. The Telluride Film Festival runs from September 3 – 6th.

Here’s the full line-up (via Telluride’s official website):

The “Show”

“A Letter to Elia,...

The Australian Directors Guild has published its list of nominees for this year’s awards, with Jeremy Sims, Rachel Perkins, David Michod, Claire McCarthy and Robert Connolly competing in the feature film category.

Television nominees include Tony Tilse for Underbelly: The Golden Mile, Peter Andrikidis for East West 101 and Amanda Brotchie for Lowdown; there are also nominations for environmental efforts and online projects.The wiinners will be announced on September 23 at Star City, Sydney.

This is the full list of nominees:

Feature Film

Beneath Hill 60 Jeremy Sims Bran Nue Dae Rachel Perkins Animal Kingdom David Michôd The Waiting City Claire McCarthy Balibo Robert Connolly

Television Mini series

East West 101: Atonement Peter Andrikidis The Circuit II: Sorry Business Steve Jodrell The Circuit II: Of Mice and Men James Bogle

Documentary Feature

Indonesia Calling: Joris Ivens in Australia John Hughes Three Boys Dreaming Michael Cordell The Burning Season...

The AFI has announced its nominees for the non-feature categories including best documentary, animated short and fiction short.

These are the nominees:

Best Feature Length Documentary

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Contact . Martin Butler, Bentley Dean Inside The Firestorm. Lucy Maclaren, Alex West The Snowman. Rachel Landers, Dylan Blowen Strange Birds In Paradise – A West Papuan Story. Jamie Nicolai, John Cherry

Three of the four nominees are featured in this Screen Australia video:

Best Short Animation

The Lost Thing. Sophie Byrne, Andrew Ruhemann, Shaun Tan Zero. Christine Kezelos, Christopher Kezelos

Best Short Fiction Film

Deeper Than Yesterday. Benjamin Gilovitz, Sarah Cyngler, Anna Kojevnikov, Ariel Kleiman The Kiss. Sonya Humphrey, Ashlee Page The Love Song of Iskra Prufrock. Lyn Norfor, Lucy Gaffy Suburbia. Richard Halsted, Antonio Oreña-Barlin

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The short nominees will be available for all AFI members on AFI TV during the screenings period,...