Sydney Film Festival 2015: Top-Lining Films Announcement

The Sydney Film Festival announced its first lineup of films for 2015.  Top titles will include the Australian thriller Strangerland starring Nicole Kidman and Hugo Weaving; Sundance World Cinema Grand Jury Prize winner Slow West with Michael Fassbender and Ben Mendelsohn; Bill Condon's new film Mr. Holmes with Ian McKellen; and Roy Andersson's Venice Film Festival winner A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence. Other submissions include Irish animated feature and Academy Award nominee Song of the Sea, Venice Film Festival winner 99 Homes, Peter Strickland's The Duke of Burgundy, and Peter Greenway's Eisenstein in Guanajuato.

Headlining the documentary section will be Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief, directed by Alex Gibney (Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room, Taxi to the Dark Side, No End in Sight).

There will be an Ingmar Bergman retrospective.  As well, also showing will be a recut version of the 1998 film 54 starring Mike Myers and Ryan Phillippe, which will include restored homoerotic content controversially edited out of Mark Christopher's original release.

The 62nd festival runs from the 3rd to 14th of June.  The full lineup of more than 200 films will be announced on the 6th of May.  For more information and tickets, please visit their website at www.sff.org.au.