The Sydney Film Festival has announced that its 68th edition will take place 18 – 29 August 2021.
Following last year’s online edition, the Summer Season (which included acclaimed films like Minari) and the Wong Kar-Wai retrospective, SFF has vacated its traditional June slot for this year only.
The move is designed to allow the Festival to continue to include films from major international festivals, many of which have gone with hybrid online/in person models split throughout the year. Cannes, for example, has been delayed from May to July, while IFFR and Berlinale have followed the hybrid format.
With travel and other fluctuations around the world due to COVID-19, this gives the festival the biggest chance to secure the largest number of releases. It will also mean that we aren’t all camped out in the rain to cluster into a confined space with festival flu in the middle of a pandemic.
At the moment, this means that discerning film fans will find SFF and the Melbourne International Film Festival overlapping for the first time. If interstate travel remains unrestricted, and MIFF doesn’t move its current dates (5 to 22 August 2021), we may end up spending the entire month of August indoors.
Which would, of course, be par for the course on the 18 months that preceded it.
Check out the official site for more details and more developments. You can also read our past coverage of the Sydney Film Festival.
