Don’t miss your chance to experience a unique and exciting array of international eye-opening cinema.

‘Subscribe and Save’ packages offer great value for multiple ticket purchases, with a Full Subscription Sawtell for just $9 per ticket including Opening Night. Or dip into the Festival with a 5-Film Flexipass Sawtell for just $10.60 per ticket. 

Full program and ticket information is available on the website and Facebook.

6.00 PM OPENING NIGHT RECEPTION 

7.00 PM  WAJIB - THE WEDDING INVITATION (15+) screens with short film SECOND BEST (15+)

Writer-director Annemarie Jacir’s multi-award winning comic drama about the lives of Palestinians living in Israel. Real-life father and son Mohammad and Saleh Bakri star.

Screens with short film Second Best, winner of the Dendy Award for Australian Live Action Short Film at Sydney Film Festival. A dark comedy about the power of identical twin sisters and their unbreakable bond. 

11:45 AM WOMAN AT WAR (15+)  

Gloriously funny, this year’s Cannes Critics’ Week award-winner from Benedikt Erlingsson (Of Horses and Men, SFF 2014) is about a DIY Icelandic eco-warrior taking on heavy industry. Erlingsson takes a wildly daring approach, bringing musical, comedic and social justice elements together in a visually lush film.

2:00 PM PIG (18+)

4:15 PM MCQUEEN (15+)

7:15 PM THE INSULT (15+)

Ziad Doueiri’s (The Attack, SFF 2013) thrilling, Oscar-nominated legal drama explores festering historical, political and religious divisions in his native Lebanon.Intelligently using humour and pathos, The Insult is ultimately a plea for empathy, forgiveness and peace, and was the winner of  the Audience Award for Best Film at the Sydney Film Festival. 

11.45 AM COLD WAR (15+)

Pawel Pawlikowski (Oscar-winner Ida) won the Best Director prize at Cannes for this passionate, music-filled love story set in Cold War-era Europe and based on the relationship of his own parents.

1:30 PM BURNING (15+) 

A love triangle mystery based on a Haruki Murakami short story, Korean great Lee Chang-dong’s (Secret Sunshine, Poetry) latest was hailed as the best-reviewed film at Cannes, winning the FIPRESCI Critics Prize. Burning became the highest-scoring film in the history of Screen International’s jury grid.

4:30 PM THE HEIRESSES (15+) screens with short film LOST & FOUND (15+)

This complex relationship drama takes an unusual look at class and privilege through the relationship of a lesbian couple in Paraguay. 

Lost & Found: Winner of the Yoram Gross Animation Award at Sydney Film Festival. A bumbling knitted dinosaur must completely unravel itself to save the love of its life

7:15 PM AMERICAN ANIMALS (MA15+)