It’s official: the Sydney Film Festival has been rescheduled to 3-14 November 2021.
Planned to hit cinemas from 18 – 29 August 2021, the extension of the Sydney pandemic lockdown for another four weeks conclusively ended any chance of a winter film festival in Sydney.
“The Sydney Film Festival looks forward to returning to cinemas for a COVID-safe event in November,” said Festival Director Nashen Moodley in a statement, “when we’ll come together to celebrate the films we love, in person.”
The press release went on to say that the Festival will reveal its Program in the coming months, with subscriptions and flexipasses valid for the new dates.
This announcement marks the third delay in the launch of the 68th Sydney Film Festival. Indeed, it was only in February that SFF announced that it was vacating its traditional June slot in order to include films from major international festivals, many of which have gone with hybrid online/in person models split throughout the year.
While the Melbourne Film Festival announced yesterday that they would pivot to an online launch and hybrid model, Moodley recently commented in an interview on why a live festival is so important. “We may feel isolated, out of touch, and missing our global connections as we all face restrictions, and have been unable to travel beyond country borders for over a year.”
In 2020, SFF ran purely as an online festival with an abbreviated program. In January this year, a ‘summer’ version of the festival ran, showcasing some of the films that Sydneysiders had missed out on from the previous year. There was also a Wong Kar-Wai retrospective that ran under the SFF banner.
Films that had been announced so far for the 2021 line-up include an Abbas Kiarostami retrospective, the indie cult favourite ZOLA and Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s WHEEL OF FORTUNE AND FANTASY.
Check out the official site for more details and more developments. You can also read our past coverage of the Sydney Film Festival.
