This year’s program features 31 feature films, 25 shorts, five forums and nine diverse arts events.
The Festival will open with the Australian premiere of the acclaimed film, Chasing Asylum. From Academy Award winning director Eva Orner, the film reveals the conditions asylum seekers are living in through never before seen footage of offshore detention centres on Nauru and Manus Island.
Dreaming Of Denmark will add another perspective to the conversation around asylum seekers. The film follows 15 year old Wasiullah, who has spent his adolescent years in Denmark after fleeing Afghanistan. The eye opening film investigates what happens to the many refugee children who disappear from asylum seeker centres year after year.
The Festival will close with the Australian premiere of the award-winning The Bad Kids. The film is an immersive, emotional experience that gives information and insight into America’s most pressing education problem: poverty.
Other film highlights include psychological thriller The Stanford Prison Experiment, exploring the source of abusive behavior in the prison system based on an experiment conducted in a simulated jail, This Changes Everything, an epic attempt to reimagine the vast challenges of climate change and Out to Win, a powerful documentary which chronicles the history of gay and lesbian sports professionals, and explores the potential of sport, as a cultural phenomenon, to be an inclusive community that provides positive representation for future LGBTIQ sports players.
