SXSW Sydney has unveiled its Screen Program for 2024, promising ‘a bold and inspiring mix of local and international features, showcasing the best across drama, horror, comedy and documentaries’. 

The line-up includes Pamela Adlon’s, Babes, a raucous ‘mom-com’ that’s a hilarious and sometimes gross take on pregnancy, motherhood and female friendship, the double-Sundance-winning semi-autobiographical film DiDi, an honest look at growing up in internet age, and The People’s Joker (35mm), an autobiographical transgender coming-of-age parody by Vera Drew.

Lucy Lawless will attend the Australian premiere of her directorial debut, Never Look Away, a documentary about the life of CNN camerawoman Margaret Moth. Other Australian premieres include Elizabeth Sankey’s Witches, which examines the depiction of witches across the cinematic landscape, and the documentary Me and My Victim, where filmmakers Maurane and Billy Pedlow document the romantic chaos of their first few dates.

Local feature film highlights include Carnage for Christmas, an Australian ode to the Christmas slasher movie starring Olivia Deeble, the dark comedy A Grand Mockery, and a screening of the coming-of-age drama Andamooka.

The full list of announced films is below:

SXSW Sydney: 2024 films

A Grand Mockery

World Premiere

Comedy Run time: TBC

Director: Sam Dixon, Adam C. Briggs

Country: Australia

Synopsis: Josie leads a life of passive mundane displeasure before his psychic ills deform him and sees him roaming the rainforest hinterlands of Queensland. A Grand Mockery is simultaneously singular and a flashback to underground filmmaking before it became codified. Filmed on soft luminous super-8, tonally playful and structured as a diptych, A Grand Mockery begins as a work of morbid comic realism before the film transforms along with Josie.

Alien Weaponry: Kua Tupa Te Ara

Australian Premiere

Music Documentary

Run time: 1 hour, 37 minutes

Director: Kent Belcher

Country: New Zealand

Synopsis: Brothers Henry and Lewis started their thrash metal band Alien Weaponry as teenagers with their parents by their side. Their mission: to rock the world and centre Māori culture while doing it. Now it’s time for them to take on what comes next, whether that means adding new band members or simply transitioning into adulthood. Positioned as a behind-the-scenes look at Alien Weaponry, debut filmmaker Kent Belcher deftly captures a band on the edge of greatness as well as a touching coming-of-age portrait. With intimate access to the band, their family and archival footage highlighting Māori culture, this documentary is sure to charm – Faridah Gbadamosi.

Andamooka

Drama

Run time: 1 hour, 22 minutes

Director: Mara Jean Quinn, Danni Oglivie

Country: Australia

Synopsis: Andamooka tells the story of a young woman named Alex whose life falls apart in the city just before her thirtieth. She decides to drive to the Australian desert to spend her birthday with her best friend in the tiny opal mining town of Andamooka. Along the way she meets all sorts of characters, encounters Aboriginal culture and has to face her inner struggles.

Audrey

Comedy

Run time: 1 hour, 37 minutes

Director: Natalie Bailey

Country: Australia

Synopsis: Self-appointed Mother of the Year, Ronnie, has given her daughter, Audrey, everything, so when Audrey selfishly falls into a coma, Ronnie has no choice but to keep their dreams alive by assuming her identity.

Azrael

Horror

Run time: 1 hour, 25 minutes

Director: E.L. Katz

Country: United States

Synopsis: In a world where no one speaks, a devout female-led community hunts down a young woman who has escaped imprisonment. Recaptured, Azrael is due to be sacrificed to an ancient evil in the wilderness, but fights for her own survival.

Babes

Comedy

Run time: 1 hour, 44 minutes

Director: Pamela Adlon Starring: Ilana Glazer, Michelle Buteau

Country: America

Synopsis: Lifelong friends Eden and Dawn, one single and wanting a baby, the other already a mother, navigate challenges to their bond when Eden pursues pregnancy alone after a one-night stand.

Carnage for Christmas

Australian Premiere

Horror

Run time: 1 hour, 10 minutes

Director: Alicia Maio Mackay

Country: Australia

Synopsis: When true-crime podcaster and sleuth Lola visits her hometown at Christmas for the first time since running away and transitioning, the vengeful ghost of a historical murderer and urban legend seemingly arises to kill again. Lola must solve the case before her community is slaughtered. She’s up against not only a psychotic killer, but a town haunted by secrets.

DiDi

Comedy

Run time: 1 hour, 34 minutes

Director: Sean Wang

Country: America

Synopsis: Set in Fremont, CA, in the year 2008, DÌDI (弟弟) is a portrait of adolescence told through the hyper-specific lens of Chris Wang, a.k.a Wang-Wang, a 13-year-old first-generation Asian American.

Frankie Freako

Horror, comedy

Run time: 1 hour, 25 minutes

Director: Steven Kostanski

Country: Canada

Synopsis: Workaholic yuppie Conor is in an existential rut until one night he catches a bizarre ad for a party hotline hosted by a strange dancing goblin: Frankie Freako. Could this be just the recipe to spice up his boring life?

Future Council

Documentary

Run time: 1hour, 20 minutes

Director: Damon Gameau (That Sugar Film, 2040)

Country: Australia

Synopsis: Damon Gameau takes eight kids on the ultimate school excursion: a road trip across Europe to seek solutions to the climate crisis.

Ghost Cat Anzu

Comedy

Run time: 1 hour, 37 minutes

Director: Yôko Kuno and Nobuhiro Yamashita

Country: Japan

Synopsis: Focusing on the friendship of Karin, a strong-minded girl sent to live with her monk granddad in the Japanese countryside, and Anzu, the even-more unpredictable phantom feline who acts as her guardian.

Grand Theft Hamlet

Documentary

Run time: 1 hour, 29 minutes

Director: Sam Crane, Pinny Grylls

Country: United Kingdom

Synopsis: Struggling actors Sam and Mark find solace from lockdown isolation by staging Hamlet in Grand Theft Auto Online (2013), battling griefers as they connect through William Shakespeare.

Inside

Drama

Run time: 1 hour, 44 minutes

Director: Charles Williams

Country: Australia

Read the ScreenHub review.

Synopsis: After being transferred from juvenile to adult prison, Mel Blight (Vincent Miller) is taken under the wing of both Mark Shepard (Cosmo Jarvis), Australia’s most despised criminal, and Warren Murfett (Guy Pearce), a soon-to-be-a-paroled inmate. As a paternal triangle grows between them, we see that even the worst of men have a little bit of good inside that will be their undoing.

Like My Brother

Documentary

Run time: 1 hour, 29 minutes

Director: Sal Balharrie and Danielle MacLean

Country: Australia

Synopsis: This coming-of-age story follows Rina, Freda, Juliana and Jess on their journey from the remote Tiwi Islands to Melbourne and back again as they dare to dream, taking up opportunities, to play football at an elite level. Each girl has unique desires – to have fun, to be a leader, to be a teacher, to make a father proud.

Look Into My Eyes

Documentary

Run time: 1 hour, 48 minutes

Director: Lana Wilson

Country: United States

Synopsis: A group of New York City psychics conduct deeply intimate readings for their clients, revealing a kaleidoscope of loneliness, connection, and healing. Comedy, drama Run time: 1 hour, 20 minutes Director: Kazik Radwanski Country: Canada Synopsis: A young professor struggles in her marriage, only to meet Matt, a man from her past who wanders onto her university campus.

Me and My Victim

Australian Premiere

Documentary, experimental

Run time: TBC

Director: Maurane, Billy Pedlow

Country: Canada

Synopsis: Montreal video artist Maurane and New Yorker poet Billy Pedlow immerse themselves in an exercise of total honesty to recreate their first dates, which quickly turn into romantic chaos.

My First Film

Drama

Run time: 1 hour, 40 minutes

Director: Zia Anger

Country: United States

Synopsis: Follow a young filmmaker as she recounts the story of struggling to make her first feature. Fact bleeding into fiction, and past, present, and future converging to create a modern myth that redefines the very act of creation.

National Anthem

Australian Premiere

Drama

Run time: 1 hour, 39 minutes

Director: Luke Gilford

Country: United States

Synopsis: A 21-year-old construction worker in New Mexico joins a community of queer rodeo performers in search of their own version of the American dream.

Never Look Away

Australian Premiere

Documentary

Run time: 1 hour, 25 minutes

Director: Lucy Lawless

Country: New Zealand

Synopsis: CNN camerawoman Margaret Moth made the wars in Bosnia and Herzegovina and Lebanon, and Operation Desert Storm in Iraq, real for North American television audiences. While her fellow journalists took cover, Moth ran towards danger, camera in hand, to get the shots. Colleagues including Christiane Amanpour attest to her bravery but it is Moth’s friends and lovers who reveal the self-destructive nature of the artist behind the lens. Innovative reconstructions of her near-lethal assignment in Sarajevo’s Sniper Alley, which turned Moth into headline news, are paired with unsettling interviews with witnesses to her daredevilry, forming the grit of this unconventional portrait. In her directorial debut, actor Lucy Lawless reveals the fearlessness of a fellow Kiwi woman-turned-groundbreaker, one who immortalised war-reporting history.

Omar and Cedric: If This Ever Gets Weird

Music documentary

Run time: 2 hours, 7 minutes

Director: Nicolas Jack Davies

Country: Germany

Synopsis: Get an all-access pass into the masterminds behind Grammy award-winning band The Mars Volta: Omar Rodriguez-Lopez and Cedric Bixler-Zavala. Whittled down from hundreds of hours of footage shot by Omar throughout their lives, the film shows the iconic duo’s journey from the hardcore scene in El Paso, Texas, to rock and roll acclaim; from growing up as minorities to their rise to success; from struggles with loss, addiction, and scientology to their blazing come-back. A uniquely personal chronicle of the life-long friendship between two era-defining artists, the film is a depiction of love, death, and inspiration – with a soundtrack that has defined a generation.

Pavements

Australian Premiere

Documentary

Run time: 2 hour, 8 minutes

Director: Alex Ross Perry

Country: United States

Synopsis: How best to commemorate the career of Pavement, one of the defining indie rock bands of the 1990s? Legendary frontman Stephen Malkmus would likely be opposed to the usual encomiums. A museum exhibition? How about a jukebox Broadway musical? Or perhaps a prestige movie biopic? Alex Ross Perry gives us all of the above and more in his pleasurably rule-flouting sorta-documentary. Fueled by a sardonic, tricky sense of humor reminiscent of Pavement’s caustic, idiosyncratic music, Perry’s film shows little patience for hagiography—or any other orthodoxy—in its nonlinear, absurdist approach. Pavements integrates archival footage of the band at the height of their cult popularity, newly shot material following them during their recent comeback tour in 2022, and a kaleidoscope of semi-scripted contemporary scenes about the shooting of a movie within the movie starring Jason Schwartzman, Fred Hechinger, Nat Wolff, Tim Heidecker, Logan Miller, and a hilarious Joe Keery as an actor seeking awards glory.

Queens of Concrete

Documentary

Run time: 1 hour, 27 minutes

Director: Eliza Cox

Country: Australia

Synopsis: Big dreams wrestle bitter truths as three teenage girls pursue Olympic history. Shot over seven years, this coming-of-age documentary chronicles the journey from childhood to adulthood and the moments that define us.

Rap World

Australian Premiere

Comedy

Run time: 57 minutes

Director: Connor O’Malley, Danny Scharar

Country: United States

Synopsis: In 2009, four friends living in Tobyhanna, Pennsylvania document their attempt to record a rap album over the course of one eventful night.

S/He Is Still Her/e : The Official Genesis P-Orridge Documentary

Music Documentary

Run time: 1 hour, 37 minutes

Director: David Charles Rodrigues, Bud Johnston

Country: United Kingdom

Synopsis: Very few artists lived their art, Genesis died three times for it. Pioneering electronic musician/avant garde artist/spiritual explorer/gender revolutionary/cult leader? Genesis P. Orridge has been featured in numerous films and videos, but never the full story … never this intimate … until now. In this authorised but extremely raw and personal documentary, award-winning director David Charles Rodrigues (Gay Chorus Deep South) documents the final year of P-Orridge’s existence as they grapple with mortality. Featuring William Burroughs, Brion Gyson, Timothy Leary, Alice Genesse (PTV), David J (Bauhaus/Love and Rockets), Nepalese monks, African Witch doctors and a special cameo by her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth, plus never before seen archival treasures, performances from COUM Transmissions, Throbbing Gristle and Psychic TV. This film is Executive Produced by Laura Jane Grace – trans activist and AGAINST ME! singer.

Salt Along The Tongue

Australian Premiere

Horror

Run time: 1 hour, 54 minutes

Director: Parish Malfitano

Country: Australia

Synopsis: After her mother’s unexpected passing, Mattia finds herself thrust into the care of her estranged aunt and her mother’s identical twin. As Mattia grapples with the loss of her mother, a treacherous secret begins to unfold, threatening her life. From beyond the grave, Mattia’s mother possesses her daughter in an attempt not only to protect her from the same fate that befell her but also to find reconciliation with her sister, using food as a gateway.

Sing Sing

Drama

Run time: 1 hour, 47 minutes

Director: Greg Kwedar

Country: United States

Synopsis: Divine G, imprisoned at Sing Sing for a crime he didn’t commit, finds purpose by acting in a theatre group alongside other incarcerated men in this story of resilience, humanity and the transformative power of art.

Slice of Life: The American Dream

International Premiere

Documentary

Run Time: TBC

Director: Matthew Salleh

Country: America

Synopsis: A contemporary portrait of America, told through a collection of stories observed within the walls of former Pizza Hut buildings across the country. These nostalgic spaces hold memories of a bygone era, but through the power of transformation, they provide something new and special for the communities that continue to flow through them. From an LGBTQ+ church in Florida, to a karaoke bar in Texas, to a cannabis dispensary in rural Colorado, these modern-day portraits are paralleled with the origin story of Pizza Hut – one of America’s most iconic brands, and the two brothers who founded the company in Wichita, Kansas in 1958.

Sunlight

Comedy

Run time: 1 hour, 36 minutes

Director: Nina Conti

Country: United Kingdom

Synopsis: A hilariously dark and unconventional love story, following two people on the edge of life who find purpose and romance through an unlikely connection, escaping the darkness in search of some sunlight.

Teaches of Peaches

Music Documentary

Run time: 1 hour, 42 minutes

Director: Philipp Fussenegger and Judy Landkammer

Country: Germany

Synopsis: Seamlessly weaving together exclusive archival gems with dynamic tour footage, this documentary captures the transformative journey of Canadian Merrill Nisker into the internationally acclaimed cultural powerhouse that is Peaches.

The Code

Australian Premiere

Comedy, drama

Run time: 1 hour, 38 minutes

Director: Eugene Kotlyarenko

Country: United States

Synopsis: Follows the misadventures of a sexless couple as their relationship falls into shambles in the early part of the pandemic.

The Gesuidouz

Australian Premiere

Horror

Run time: 1 hour, 33 minutes

Director: Kenichi Ugana

Country: Japan

Synopsis: Hanako, vocalist of the now iconic punk band The Gesuidouz, along with guitarist Masao, bassist Ryuzo, and drummer Santarou, face a question from a foreign interviewer … ‘What does music mean to you?’. Hanako reflects on the band’s journey, beginning under a small record label. The Gesuidouz are confronted by a pile of unsold albums and dwindling audience numbers. Their manager, Takamura, proposes a last-ditch effort: relocate to the countryside, compose a new song, and if it’s a hit, he won’t drop them from the record label. Seeing it as their final opportunity, Hanako, grappling with a belief that she will die at age 27, holds onto her rock star dreams and agrees. With a beat-up van full of equipment and unsold albums, the band settles in a remote village with no cell phone service.

The Human Hibernation

Australian Premiere

Drama, experimental

Run time: 1 hour, 30 minutes

Director: Anna Cornudella Castro

Country: Spain

Synopsis: The Human Hibernation is a film about human nature if it had been different. Starting from the disappearance of Erin, a child who wakes up prematurely from hibernation, Clara, her older sister, will take us on a journey of searching for answers and confronting the narratives pre-established by the society in which she lives. One that hibernates during the coldest months of the year. A reflection on the human being, contradiction and the animal condition.

The Most Australian Band Ever!

Australian Premiere

Music Documentary

Run time: 1 hour, 46 minutes

Director: Jonathan J. Sequeira

Country: Australia

Synopsis: Three ethnic school kids from Sydney’s western suburbs form a punk band in the 80s. The Hard-Ons fight racism, the music industry and the rise of grunge with their pop punk noise, irreverent humour and absolute commitment to just being themselves.

The Thicket

Australian Premiere

Drama

Run time: 1 hour, 48 minutes

Director: Elliott Lester

Country: United States

Synopsis: West Texas. A boy who, after his sister is kidnapped by a violent killer known only as Cut Throat Bill, enlists a fierce bounty hunter named Reginald Jones who becomes the leader of the group of outcasts searching for the stolen girl.

Visitors: Complete Edition

Australian Premiere

Horror

Run time: 1 hour, 1 minute

Director: Kenichi Ugana

Country: Japan

Synopsis: Haruka, Nana and Takanori visit the home of Souta, a band member they have lost contact with, only to find that the windows are covered with newspaper, creating an eerie atmosphere. Nana, guided by a mysterious force, removes the newspaper pasted at the back of the room and opens a door to another world.

Witches

Australian Premiere

Documentary

Run time: 1 hour, 30 minutes

Director: Elizabeth Sankey

Country: United Kingdom

Synopsis: In this personal and intimate film, writer-director Elizabeth Sankey uses her own story of being admitted to a psychiatric ward after the birth of her son to explore the unexpected yet compelling connections between perinatal mental health and the history and portrayal of witches in western society and pop culture. Using clips of cinema’s witches to illustrate her own experience and those of fellow sufferers, alongside interviews with medical professionals and academics, Sankey creates her own spell book for all to use.

www.RachelOrmont.com

Australian Premiere

Comedy, experimental

Run time: 1 hour, 20 minutes

Director: Peter Vack

Country: United States

Synopsis: Rachel doesn’t realise she has grown up in captivity working for an advertising agency where her job is to assess Mommy 6.0 – her favorite pop star.

Xoftex

Australian Premiere

Horror

Run time: 1 hour, 39 minutes

Director: Noaz Deshe

Country: France

Synopsis: A group of young Syrians in a refugee camp decides to make a zombie movie. What begins as a satire, which reflects their most intimate fears, turns into a fantasy world that threatens their reality.

SXSW Sydney runs from October 14–20. More information and tickets.