This year’s 58th Sydney Film Festival will take place Wednesday, June 8th to Sunday, June 19th. The festival will include feature films, documentaries, short films and animations across the city at the State Theatre, Event Cinemas George Street, Dendy Opera Quays and the Art Galleries of NSW and UNSW. Among the selection of this highly eclectic international program is a brand new Greek film, “Attenburg”, directed by Athina Rachel. Rachel was the producer of the successful and award-winning Greek film “Dogtooth”, and “Attenburg” has already secured an award with Ariane Labed winning Best Actress.
Athina Rachel Tsangari’s “Attenberg” is concerned with nothing less than those hardy perennials: sex, death, and modernity. Ariane Labed stars as Marina, a twenty something naïf living in a small Greek city whose inexperience in all matters sexual is mirrored by her disgust for the act. Marina’s only friend, the sexually frivolous Bella (Evangelia Randou), teaches her how to kiss. This mimicking of animal behavior becomes one of the central motifs in the film. Inspired by the nature documentaries of Sir David Attenborough (whose mispronounced name gives the film its title), Marina constantly emulates the gorillas and other animals she sees on television, engaging in improvised showdowns with both Bella and her other companion, her dying father (Vangelis Mourikis). Although it is a humorous movie as Clare Stewart, the Sydney Film Festival’s artistic director explained, “It’s not a laugh out loud film, it’s got funny moments of course, but it’s also very thoughtful and really moving, and I knew immediately it had to be part of my program.”
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