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Russian director Andrey Zvyagintsev.

Exiled Russian master continues rebirth with Sydney Film Festival win

Andrey Zvyagintsev’s crime thriller Minotaur claimed the $60,000 competition prize for “audacious, cutting-edge and courageous” cinema.

  • Garry Maddox

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Tamra Davis’ The Best Summer will screen at Sydney Film Festival Credit: Sydney Film Festival.

Was this the best Aussie summer ever? This filmmaker thinks so

Tamra Davis’ new music doco The Best Summer offers an intimate trip inside a festival with a line-up that reads like the ultimate alt-’90s fever dream.

  • Robert Moran
Andrei Zvyagintsev on the set of Minotaur.

‘People are used like meat’: How Russia’s greatest director is taking on Putin from exile

Against a backdrop of domestic murder, Minotaur director Andrey Zvyagintsev rages against the Russian regime. This time, they won’t mistake the message.

  • Stephanie Bunbury
Hugh Jackman as a grizzled Robin Hood.

Hugh Jackman’s dark and gritty Robin Hood plus nine other Sydney Film Festival standouts

The Australian star sheds his Wolverine skin for a very different take on the outlaw legend at this year’s festival.

  • Garry Maddox
“For banks, you tell them you’re a piano tuner and they think you’re an elephant trainer”: Martin Tucker and his documentary director partner Natalia Laska whose film, The Piano Tuner, is having a world premiere at Sydney Film Festival.

This Tasmanian has tuned 18,000 pianos. Now he’s won a place at Sydney Film Festival

Martin Tucker’s work tuning an estimated 18,000 pianos is the subject of a documentary having a world premiere at Sydney Film Festival.

  • Garry Maddox
Kristen McLennan at her free-range chicken farm in Kangaroo Valley with filmmaker Ian Darling, whose documentary on silence and solitude a rural community will premiere at the Sydney Film Festival in June.

Three-hour Kangaroo Valley documentary is ‘a real escape from madness’

Ian Darling’s The Valley, which will make its world premiere at Sydney Film Festival in June, is about silence and solitude in a rural community.

  • Garry Maddox
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Jafar Panahi in Sydney at the start of the festival.

Amid conflict at home, Iranian director wins top prize at Sydney Film Festival

Jafar Panahi’s It Was Just an Accident has been awarded the $60,000 prize in a competition for “audacious, courageous and cutting-edge” films.

  • Garry Maddox
Lesbian Space Princess

The highs and lows of the Sydney Film Festival

After an opening night attraction that lived up to the hype, there was a lot to enjoy and the odd disappointment.

  • Garry Maddox
Director Jafar Panahi.

From prison to the Palme d’Or: Jafar Panahi’s defiant message to the world

Iranian director Jafar Panahi said seeing his secretly made film with an audience after 15 years was the most exciting liberty.

  • Stephanie Bunbury
Iranian director Jafar Panahi in Sydney.

The secret plan to bring a dissident Iranian filmmaker to Australia

Jafar Panahi did not know whether he would be allowed to leave Iran after a backlash against his Palme d’Or-winning film.

  • Garry Maddox