Screen Australia congratulates the creative teams behind the six Australian films selected for the 2017 Sundance Film Festival. Revealed in a staggered announcement this week, Australian films RED DOG: True Blue, Berlin Syndrome, Killing Ground, Casting JonBenet (USA/Australia), Orbital Vanitas and Slapper will join approximately 200 international titles screening at the festival in Utah in January 2017.
Berlin Syndrome, directed by Cate Shortland (Lore, Somersault), written by Shaun Grant (Snowtown, Deadline Gallipoli) and starring Teresa Palmer (Hacksaw Ridge, Wish You Were Here) – is one of twelve feature films in the World Cinema Dramatic Competition line-up. The psychological thriller, based on the novel by Melanie Joosten, follows a holiday romance which turns sinister when an Australian photojournalist wakes one morning in a Berlin apartment, locked in and unable to escape. The film, which received development and production funding from Screen Australia, will have its world premiere at Sundance Film Festival.
The unmistakably Australian RED DOG: True Blue – the prequel to 2011’s global hit Red Dog, from director Kriv Stenders (Kill Me Three Times, Boxing Day) and screenwriter Daniel Taplitz – will have its North American premiere in the Kids section of the festival. Thriller Killing Ground, from writer/director Damien Power, sees a young couple discover a bloodied toddler wandering in the bush near an isolated abandoned campsite, unleashing a chilling chain of events.
Screening alongside fifteen world-premiere documentaries in the US Documentary Competition is Casting JonBenet from Australian director Kitty Green, whose 2013 film Ukraine is Not a Brothel was invited to appear at the Venice Film Festival. Being presented as part of the New Frontier film showcase comes virtual reality work Orbital Vanitas from world-renowned video artist Shaun Gladwell (The Lacrima Chair, Storm Sequence) and collaborator Leo Faber.
Slapper brings audiences closer to earth, to a suburban wasteland in rural Australia where a broke, angry teenager hustles money for the morning-after pill while stuck babysitting a wild and uncooperative five-year-old, determined to not let poverty strip her of her bodily autonomy. The short film won writer/director/producer Luci Schroder the Dendy Live Action Short Award at Sydney Film Festival and the Swinburne Award for Emerging Australian Filmmaker at Melbourne International Film Festival earlier this year. Slapper will screen as part of the Short Film program at Sundance in 2017.
