Alzheimer’s disease was memorably portrayed by Anthony Hopkins in The Father, for which he won an Oscar. This new poignant drama explores the bewildering fact that sufferers can experience momentary reprieves. In a deeply-felt performance, Noni Hazlehurst (the matriarch on the sophisticated Australian soap opera A Place to Call Home) plays June Wilton, a victim of dementia who was once the formidable mother of two adult children but now can no longer remember them. Family ties are explored when she unexpectedly inserts herself back into the lives of her estranged loved ones and attempts to make improvements. Australia 2019 (99 minutes)

Sponsor: Australian Consulate General San Francisco

The name of this touching documentary derives from the anguished cry of refugees in a war-torn world. It makes an apt title for this immigrant success story of Sir Frank Lowy, a Czech Jew who became co-founder of the Westfield Corporation and one of Australia’s wealthiest men. At 80 he must decide whether to sell the global shopping company built with his three sons. The decision is especially emotional because his father’s death in a concentration camp forced Lowy to live as a refugee. Settling in Australia and becoming hugely successful was for him more about feeling safe than simply making money. US/Australia 2019 (96 minutes)

Sponsor: Gerry and Fran Schall

Sponsor: Australian Consulate General San Francisco

Academy Award nominated director Stephen Daldry’s (The Hours, Billy Elliot) unique comedy is a hilarious and heartbreaking story that intimately shows two partners forced to reevaluate themselves and their relationship through the reality of the 2020 lockdown, while finding a way to survive as a family. A dream showcase for stars James McAvoy (X-Men, The Last King of Scotland) and Sharon Horgan (TV’s Catastrophe and This Way Up), each delivering performances that rank among their very best.

“A tour de force of writing and acting” -The Guardian

“Unflinching and very funny” – The Independent

UK, 2021 (92 minutes)

It’s hard to believe that Fisherman’s Friends is based on a true story, but yes, a group of rough and ready, cheery fishermen in Cornwall are spotted by a London music manager on a stag weekend and signed up to record their sea shanties. Originally the music exec’s snobbish friends are joking, goading him on to see the potential of folk music but the fishermen, the village and a fisherman’s daughter win him over for real. Beautifully shot in Port Isaac, a picturesque fishing village in Dorset, and around iconic scenes in London. In 2010 the ten singers did hit the charts in the UK!
UK 2019 (112 minutes)

David Gulpilil was Australia’s most acclaimed Indigenous actor, debuting in Walkabout in 1971 as a lone youth wandering the Outback as part of a tribal rite of passage. He gained a wide audience in Crocodile Dundee. It is an honor to present the U.S. premiere of the award-winning documentary of this actor’s extraordinary life, made more poignant by his death in November. For Gulpilil, who had inoperable lung cancer but lived for years past a dire diagnosis, the film – winner of Best Documentary from the Australian Academy of Cinema and Television Arts–is his fond farewell and valediction.  The Sydney Morning Herald calls it “unbearably moving and utterly engaging,” and The Guardian says it is “sublime, humane and elegant” and “rises to the challenge of doing justice to the extraordinary.” Australia 2021 (101 minutes)

Sponsor: Australian Consulate General San Francisco

Winning period drama based on the true story of Marx’s youngest daughter, Eleanor, played to perfection by Romola Garai, an intelligent, thoughtful woman imprisoned by the conventions of Victorian England. We feel those constraints motivating her drive for social reform and women’s rights. We also understand the illusions she had about her father, Karl Marx, the revolutionary she idolized. Sadly, following her heart she falls for a playwright and charismatic Marxist. We root for Eleanor, as do her wonderful array of bohemian friends, including Havelock Ellis and Olive Schreiner, but while fighting to save the world, she could not save herself. UK/Italy 2020 (107 minutes)

Almost perfect social realist drama and debut feature from Eva Riley about a lonely, but determined teenage gymnast, who having lost her mother is abandoned by her useless father. Everything changes one evening when she meets her half-brother, a cocky ne’er-do-well, who arrives home on his motorbike and somehow draws Frankie into his rather exciting underworld of small-time theft. There is real warmth and tenderness between them and these newbies are magnetic to watch – Frankie Box, a real-life gymnast, and Alfie Deegan, a trainee carpenter. Winner The Discovery Award, British Independent Film Awards. UK 2019 (84 minutes)

Hollywood quickly learned that grumpy old men can be funny onscreen. Now the Australians have taken this knowledge a step further in the touching comedy Never Too Late. A group of former Vietnam POWs who escaped their captors now find themselves unhappily contained in the Hogan Hills Retirement Home for Returned Veterans. Known as the Chain Breakers for their exploits in the war, the men figure breaking out of a nursing home should be a walk in the park by comparison. Only then can they fulfill their unrealized dreams. For James Cromwell’s character that means reconnecting with the love of his life (Jacki Weaver). 2020 Australia (95 minutes)

Sponsor: Australian Consulate General San Francisco

Partly autobiographical, Last Film Show is a simple, yet rapturous, ode to the 35mm celluloid cinema era. Director and writer Pan Nalin traces the journey of a young boy in a remote Indian village and his relationship with cinema in a rapidly-changing world. This reverent and magical film is an East Indian Cinema Paradiso. Winner, World Cinema Award 2021 Mill Valley Film Festival India/France/USA 2021 (110 minutes)