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Neil Armfield.s Holding the Man, Simon Stone.s The Daughter, Jeremy Sims. Last Cab to Darwin and Jen Peedom.s feature doc Sherpa will have their world premieres at the Sydney Film Festival.

The festival program unveiled today includes 33 world premieres (including 22 shorts) and 135 Australian premieres (with 18 shorts) among 251 titles from 68 countries.

Among the other premieres will be Daina Reid.s The Secret River, Ruby Entertainment's. ABC-tv miniseries starring Oliver Jackson Cohen and Sarah Snook, and three Oz docs, Marc Eberle.s The Cambodian Space Project — Not Easy Rock .n. Roll, Steve Thomas. Freedom Stories and Lisa Nicol.s Wide Open Sky.

Festival director Nashen Moodley boasted. this year.s event will be far larger than 2014's when 183 films from 47 countries were screened, including 15 world premieres. The expansion is possible in part due to the addition of two new screening venues in Newtown and Liverpool.

As previously announced, Brendan Cowell...

Dramas which keep the tension tightly under the lid while eschewing a boiling melodramatic outburst can be challenging. On the other hand, de-dramatized dramas with smoother edges are easier to chew on for laid-back, cerebral viewers. Croatian director Ognjen Sviličić demonstrates the mastery of combining both approaches in his fifth feature, These Are the Rules.Bus driver Ivo (Emir Hadzihafizbegovic) and his spouse Maja (Jasna Zalica) are an ordinary middle-aged couple living a routine life in a block of apartments. Their calm and unexcited life peppered by everyday bickering will soon come crashing down as the parents discover their teenage son has been severely beaten. Tomica (Hrvoje Vladisavljevic) comes home one morning, just as his parents are getting up. They let him recuperate the missing...

[Read the whole post on twitchfilm.com...]...

★★★★☆Ognjen Svilicic's These Are the Rules (2014) is a modest work of quiet desperation, but it's obvious restraint and slow unwinding has a powerful, unsettling and ultimately moving effect. Middle-aged bus driver Ivo (Emir Hadžihafizbegović) lives with his wife Maja (Jasna Žalica) in a tidy, if dreary high rise apartment. It is a life of routine where something always need to be done: shoes by the door, door handles to be fixed, a new battery for the car. Their relationship is based on low level bickering, which - it becomes apparent - is actually another species of affection, watching TV and eating together. One morning their 17-year-old son, Tomica (Hrvoje Vladisavljevic), comes in having spent the night out.

While a Venetian touch (gondolas, art, architecture, margherita pizzas) certainly adds to the charm of the Venice Film Festival experience, for a third year straight, cinephiles can skip the packing their suitcases portion of a trip and bring the Lido into their own screening rooms. Venice Biennale’s Sala Web has reteamed with Festival Scope folks to offer an appetite whetting total of eleven features (8 Orizzonti section & 3 Biennale College – Cinema). Announced yesterday, digital tickets for the Sala Web screenings (4€ each) can be grabbed at www.boxoffice.festivalscope.com – but don’t throw your popcorn into the microwave just yet. The 2014 sampling of world cinema/72nd Venice Film Fest is only available during a period of 5 days beginning at 9 pm (Italian time) on the day of each film’s official presentation.

Among the headliner items we find Kandahar helmer Mohsen Makhmalbaf’s The President tells a story set in a fictional...

The 71st Venice Film Festival announced its lineup this morning, highlighted by films from American directors, including David Gordon Green, Barry Levinson, Peter Bogdanovich, Lisa Cholodenko, Andrew Niccol, and James Franco. As had been previously announced, Alejandro González Iñárritu’s Birdman, starring Michael Keaton and many others, will be the opening film when the festival begins on Aug. 27.

Click below for the entire list of 55 films playing in Venice.

Competition

The Cut, directed by Fatih Akin

Starring Tahar Rahim, Akin Gazi, Simon Abkarian, George Georgiou

A Pigeon Sat On A Branch Reflecting On Existence, directed by Roy Andersson

Starring Holger Andersson,...