ADLFF 2017: ‘Cargo’, ‘Sweet Country’, ‘How To Talk To Girls At Parties’ lead Adelaide Film Festival highlights

Cargo - Martin Freeman

The Adelaide Film Festival has released the first tickets for its 2017 and it is already filled with a boatload of world and Australian premieres. CARGO, HOW TO TALK TO GIRLS AT PARTIES and SWEET COUNTRY lead a pack of flicks that have immediately worked their way into our film-loving hearts. It runs from the 5 to 15 October this year.

Starring Martin Freeman, and based on a short film by Yolanda Ramke and Ben Howling, the duo will mark the world premiere of there film at the Festival. Set in the aftermath of a global pandemic, a man and his infant daughter travel across the outback while he looks for a new guardian for his baby following an infection. Also starring Natasha Wanganeen and David Gulpilil, this is bound to have massive buzz about it.

The combination of Neil Gaiman and John Cameron Mitchell (Hedwig and the Angry Inch, Shortbus) is already enough to get out hearts racing, so HOW TO TALK TO GIRLS AT PARTIES is well and truly on our radar. It’s about a romance between aliens and punks in 1977, and how all of those things make total sense when thrown into the same world. 

Sweet Country (Transmission Films)

SWEET COUNTRY was recently announced as debuting at the Venice International Film Festival this year, and its next stop will be Adelaide. The new narrative feature form Warwick Thornton (Samson & Delilah, We Don’t Need a Map), Bryan Brown, Ewen Leslie, Thomas M. Wright, Natassia Gorey-Furber, Anni Finsterer, Matt Day, and Sam Neill lead the phenomenal cast.

Other fiction films include Sophie Hyde’s appropriately titled F!#KING ADELAIDE, along with short features such as Emma Magenta’s REMEMBERING AGATHA, and ODDLANDS from Bruce Gladwin.

International documentary DOLPHIN MAN follows Lefteris Charitos, the deep-sea diver that was the inspiration for Luc Besson’s The Big Blue, while AFTER THE APOLOGY looks at a very topical issue closer to home, as four grandmothers start a movement to tackle the rising number of Aboriginal children in out-of-home care

If that’s not enough 80’s punk legends Exploding White Mice will reunite for a special gig during the festival.

Tickets for these films are now on sale at adelaidefilmfestival.org, with the full program set to be launched Tuesday 29 August.