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More SAFC supported titles announced for Adelaide Film Festival
16 September 2022
A further five SAFC-supported productions have been announced for the Adelaide Film Festival program this October, in addition to the previously announced opening night gala film The Angels: Kickin’ Down The Door + short film Marungka Tjalantananyi / Dipped in Black, Australian premieres of Talk To Me, Carnifex, Monolith, The Last Daughter and immersive project Wave.
The festival’s 2022 program, announced last week, features an array of outstanding SAFC-supported productions including four feature films, three feature documentaries, three short films, and two immersive narrative projects funded by the SAFC.
Rolf de Heer’s highly anticipated 15th feature film, The Survival of Kindness will premiere at the festival. This SAFC-supported film was written, directed and produced by Rolf de Heer and produced by Julie Byrne and Rolf de Heer. The SAFC supported four South Australian First Nations crew on the film, providing them with their first feature film credits as Heads of Departments: Production Designer Maya Coombs, Gaffer/Grip Damian Wanganeen, Sound Recordist/Sound Designer Adam Dixon-Galea and Editor Isaac Lindsay.
An allegorical examination of race and power, The Survival of Kindness follows a nameless woman (South Australian actor Mwajemi Hussein) as she walks from the desert to the mountains in a nameless country, battling privilege and pestilence, perhaps to find those who once imprisoned her, abandoned her and left her to die.
Book tickets here.
SAFC-supported feature documentary Watandar My Countryman, directed by Jolyon Hoff, written by Muzafar Ali and produced by Hoff and Ali together with Hamish Gibbs Ludbrook is the story of former Afghan Refugee, new Australian and photographer, Muzafar Ali, who discovers that Afghans have been an integral part of Australia for over 160 years and, searching to define his own Afghan-Australian identity, he begins to photograph their descendants. Then the Taliban take over Afghanistan and his old country comes calling.
Book tickets here.
Short film The Last Elephant on Earth, funded under the SAFC/AFF/Panavision Short Film Production Initiative has also been selected for the festival. The short, directed by SA’s Johanis Lyons-Reid and written and produced by Piri Eddy won the Best Short Script at the 2021 Australian Writers Guild The 54th AWGIES Awards.
When fifteen-year-old Elle brings up the elephant in the room – a fiery meteor heading for Earth – her father refuses to acknowledge the coming danger, instead believing a crackpot specialist who tells him that Elle is, in fact, a critically endangered Sumatran elephant.
Book tickets here.
Hike, a short film from South Australian animation, game and experience studio Monkeystack explores grief and memory in the wake of a tragedy. It is directed by Justin Wight and Alexander Rodeghiego-Smith and was funded through the 2022 Unreal Engine Short Film Challenge. Hike will show as a part of the animated shorts program, tickets here.
Thin Ice VR, also from Monkeystack will play as part of the Virtual Reality component of the festival. This award-winning SAFC supported production was directed by James Calvert and produced by Justin Wight and executive produced by Rhys Sandery and Troy Bellchambers. Book tickets here.
Screening before all competition and special presentations in AFF is Greeting to Country shared by Kaurna Elders Karl Winda Telfer and Nganki Burka Mekauwe Georgina Williams funded by the SAFC, the Adelaide Film Festival, Screen Australia and the City of Adelaide. The film is co-directed by Clem Newchurch and Karl Winda Telfer and produced by Alison Rogers.