Today marks the start of another Sydney Film Festival, a venerable institution now in its 73rd year. I’ve been going since my student days, and have always tried to attend opening night, the award presentations, and whatever screenings I could catch. This year I had to ask about opening night and was told that all the seats were allocated. As for film tickets, the media department had decided to prioritise journalists who were doing interviews with guests.
It’s slightly ironic that the opening night feature is an Australian documentary called Silenced, which looks at human rights lawyer, Jennifer Robinson. I would have liked to see and write about this film, but for the time being I’m silenced.
My mistake this year was to complacently assume the SFF is interested in critical responses. It seems the new hardline marketing strategy is to minimise criticism and maximise PR. I’d be very surprised if any of the interviews conducted with guests contain a single harsh word about a featured film. Most interviews are love-ins, often written by journos who have simply swotted up beforehand.
I could speculate further about this new policy, but as the SFF is patently uninterested in reviews it makes more sense for me to return the compliment and write about a feature that’s not part of the line-up. The pick of the festival will get a run at local cinemas, as happens with the best features from the year’s national film festivals - which leads me to Mascha Schilinski’s The Sound of Falling, a highlight of the 2026 German Film Festival.