AN EXCITING and diverse range of films and documentaries starring, featuring or about older people will be among the highlights at the 64th Sydney Film Festival, which will light up the city from June 7-18.
Maudie, based on a true story, is an unlikely romance in which the reclusive Everett Lewis (Ethan Hawke) hires a fragile yet determined Nova Scotia woman named Maudie (Sally Hawkins) to be his housekeeper.
Bright-eyed but hunched with crippled hands, Maudie yearns to be independent, to live away from her protective family and she also yearns, passionately, to create art. Unexpectedly, Everett finds himself falling in love.
Maudie charts Everett's efforts to protect himself from being hurt, Maudie's deep and abiding love for this difficult man and her surprising rise to fame as a folk painter.
In the eco-thriller Spoor, Duszejko (Agnieszka Mandat), an eccentric retired construction engineer, an astrologist and a vegetarian, lives in a village on the Czech-Polish border.
One day her beloved dogs disappear. A few months later she discovers a dead body of her neighbour, a poacher. The only traces leading to the mysterious death are those of roe deer hooves around the house...
As time goes by, more grisly killings are discovered. The victims, all hunters, belonged to the local elite. The police investigation proves ineffective. Duszejko has her own theory: all murders were committed by wild animals.
The documentary Winnie, meanwhile, takes a fresh and sympathetic look at the life of Winnie Mandela, the controversial wife of the revered Nelson Mandela.
Routinely demonised as a victim turned perpetrator, it seems a paradox that she nevertheless generates passionate respect among those who still struggle in South Africa. This film examines way.
Sally Potter's The Party - described as a comedy wrapped around a tragedy - unfolds in real time in a house in London.
Janet (Kristin Scott Thomas) is hosting an intimate gathering of friends to celebrate her promotion to shadow minister of health. Her husband, Bill (Timothy Spall), seems preoccupied.
As their friends arrive, some of whom have their own dramatic news to share, the soirée gradually unravels. The Party becomes a night that began with champagne but ends with blood on the floor.
Maite Alberdi's The Grown Ups is a documentary about four middle-aged adults with Down Syndrome who work in the catering department of a Chilean school, where they have lived for 40 years.
The group's members feel ready for a life of greater autonomy, for love, marriage and financial independence but the world but this is elusive in a system that finds their desire for individual responsibility difficult to accept.
For a full list of films, times, dates and venues (this year there are 11), or to book tickets, go to www.sff.org.au
