68th Sydney Film Festival postponed to 3-14 November

The organizers of the 68th edition of the Sydney Film Festival (SFF) have announced that in light of the Sydney lockdown extension announced by the New South Wales government on 28 July, the event will be postponed until 3 to 14 November. 

The festival is usually held in the month of June every year, where it takes place over 12 days. This year too, the festival had announced its initial line-up of 22 films in June, which included features and documentaries. This included banned Iranian filmmaker Mohammad Rasoulof’s There Is No Evil, the Canadian Indigenous sci-fi film Night Raiders directed by Danis Goulet and produced by Taika Waititi, Russian filmmaker Andrei Konchalovsky’s Dear Comrades! and Blerta Basholli’s Hive, the story of a Kosovo war widow.  

The programme also includes the documentary from India Writing With Fire, directed by Rintu Thomas and Sushmit Ghosh, which is the story of an all-female news network and its tenacious grassroots reporting. The film won the Special Jury and Audience Awards at Sundance 2021.

In view of the date changes, the organizers announced that all tickets, passes and subscriptions purchased will remain valid for the new festival dates. 

A statement on the festival website read, “SFF remains committed to presenting a COVID-safe in-cinema festival this year and will launch the full programme and single-ticket sales once lockdown has ended.”

The festival was held virtually last year.