Antenna, Australia’s premier international non-fiction film festival, today unwraps its complete program for 2024. The event boasts a lineup of 52 of the most compelling, thought-provoking documentaries from around the globe, set to transform Sydney into a haven for documentary enthusiasts from 9–19 February 2024.
Festival Director Dudi Rokach expressed, “I am supremely proud of this lineup as a whole. Each documentary is imaginative, cinematic, and provocative, exemplifying the boundless potential of documentary cinema in the hands of a skillful filmmaker.”
Kicking off the festival is the Australian Premiere of Tribeca Film Festival winner The Gullspång Miracle. It’s a consistently unexpected and amusing film that follows two devout sisters who purchase an apartment after witnessing a divine sign, only to realise that the seller bears a striking resemblance to their other sister, who committed suicide some thirty years prior. What begins as a story of familial reunion morphs into a drama that’s stranger than fiction.
In an exhilarating new partnership with the Sydney Opera House, Antenna will close the festival with the Australian Premiere of Ryuichi Sakamoto | Optus, a concert film that encapsulates Sakamoto’s final performance. A celebration of an artist’s life in its purest form, this film serves as the definitive farewell to the beloved maestro.
Fresh from TIFF and IDFA, Antenna will host the Australian Premiere of The World is Family by the renowned documentary filmmaker Anand Patwardhan, who will be a special guest at the festival. Anand’s insights into social and political life have garnered him both festival awards and governmental bans. In The World is Family, his most personal film to date, he paints a portrait of his parents, whose families were intertwined with Gandhi and India’s independence movement.
The festival also boasts Australian Premieres of new films by acclaimed directors, including Wang Bing’s Youth (Spring), Werner Herzog’s Theatre of Thought, Claire Simon’s Our Body, and Oscar-winning filmmaker Alex Gibney’s new film In Restless Dreams: The Music of Paul Simon.
In a world increasingly shaped by urgent and complex conflicts, Antenna’s film selection offers audiences an opportunity to delve beyond the headlines into the raw, personal narratives that define our times. Bye Bye Tiberias takes us on a personal journey through Palestine, where actress Hiam Abbass (Succession) after a 30-year absence, navigates the fragmented memories of generations of resilient Palestinian women…
For the full article, visit www.antennafestival.org.