PREVIEW: 2020 SCIFI FILM FESTIVAL

The organising body of the 8th SciFi Film Festival has held firm to the event dates announced prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, despite moments of introspection and careful consideration as to the fate of the 2020 festival. Currently set to roll out August 28-31 at the Event Cinemas George Street complex in Sydney, the festival has announced a program of films culled from a record number of submissions and representing science-fiction visionaries from 21 countries.

The 2020 Opening Night honours have been bestowed upon Jeremy LaLonde’s time-travel comedy James vs His Future Self, featuring Jonas Chernick as a young man facing off against a cynical, hard-bitten future version of himself, in the form of a terrific Daniel Stern (Home Alone, 1990; City Slickers, 1991; pictured, top). The darkly funny romp, co-starring Australian actress Cleopatra Coleman, scored the Best SciFi Film at Toronto’s After Dark Film Festival. It will be paired with the World Premiere of the Australian short A Blaster in the Right Hands, a Star Wars fan-fiction film helmed by Richard de Carvallho.

Seven other features will fill out the program, each one an Australian Premiere. In addition to the previously announced Cargo, the moving, funny Hindi-language Indian production from director Arati Kadav, the SciFi Film Festival has scored three titles from the vibrant Canadian film sector - Guarav Seth’s Entangled (pictured, right), a twisted psychological drama in which a Flatliners-like quantum physics experiment turns friends against each other; Eric Schultz’s Minor Premise, starring Sathya Sridharan as the neuroscientist facing off against his own split consciousness; and, in the Closing Night slot, Erin Berry’s M.A.J.I.C., a post-X-Files conspiracy theory deep-dive involving alien abduction and men in black mythology that snared Best Film kudos at this years’ Berlin SciFi Film Festival.

Also slated are the U.S. features To Your Last Death, an ultra-violent animated pic from director Jason Axinn featuring the voices of William Shatner, Morena Baccarin and Ray Wise, and the lo-fi, hi-energy American SciFi, an 80s-inspired teen adventure from director Chris McElroy. The lone Australian feature to have made the cut is Colm O’Murchu’s Tabernacle 101, an afterlife thriller starring David Hov and Mikaela Franco.

The short-film roster boasts a mammoth 36 entrants, spanning 20 countries. Highlights include Japan’s Ryoko’s Qubit Summer, an A.I./LGBTIQ-themed romance from director Yuichi Kondo, a Best Film award winner from the Berlin SciFi Film Festival; from Yemen, Hashim Hashim’s spiritual journey story, A Homeland Bird (pictured, right); Gábor Osváth’s Best Game Ever, a crowdpleaser from Hungary; and, from Bahrain, Eva Daoud’s ‘battle of the genders’ horror pic, The Light Thief.

The shorts will screen both ahead of the feature sessions and under their own strands. On Saturday 27th at 10.30am, eight short films will be presented under ‘Students of SciFi’, including the Australian production Alyssa from teenage filmmaker, Shania Anderson; at 3.30pm, the slightly risque strand ‘Love, Sex and Science Fiction’ will screen MA-rated shorts from nations including The Netherlands (Tommie Geraedts’ Zwart; Gideon van Eeden’s God Glitch), Poland (Pawel Son Ngo’s The Host) and China (Linq Kim’s A.N.N.I.); and, on Sunday 30th at 1.00pm, the ‘Women in SciFi’ strand, supported by Women in Film & Television (WIFT) NSW, will highlight genre works by women filmmakers.

The SCIFI FILM FESTIVAL will be held August 28-30 at Event Cinema George Street. For full program information, visit the festival’s official website or Facebook page.