The festival returns from 18-29 October with South Australian directorial debuts alongside a Cannes Film Festival Palme d’Or winner. We give you the rundown of some of the festival’s highly anticipated flicks.

Anatomy of a Fall

Directed and co-written by Justine Triet, psychological thriller Anatomy of a Fall won the coveted Palme d’Or at Cannes Film Festival earlier this year.

The film is set in the French Alps and follows German writer Sandra as she’s brought to trial after the mysterious death of her French husband, Samuel.

As the trial unfolds, it reveals more of the couple’s tumultuous relationship. The person most affected by these revelations? Their eleven-year-old son.

Anatomy of a Fall features three languages, French, English and German. 

Because Sandra and Samuel don’t speak the same first language, they use a third as a neutral ground to negotiate what they want out of their lives. Language also plays a role in positioning Sandra as an outsider as the trial takes place in France.

When co-writing the film with Arthur Harari, the pair consulted a criminal lawyer to get a better understanding of French court hearings and check accuracy in the story.

Tiret says this process allowed her to create “a distinctly French film and take a different approach from the more spectacle-driven American courtroom dramas.”

“The courtroom is essentially where our history no longer belongs to us, where it’s judged by others who have to piece it together from scattered and ambiguous elements,” Tiret says.

This fictious thriller is said to be unpredictable and full of verbal sparring – what more could you want from a legal drama?

Housekeeping for Beginners

Goran Stolevski’s Housekeeping for Beginners hits AFF off the back of its world premiere at Venice International Film Festival.

This is Stolevski’s third feature, following You Won’t Be Alone which premiered at Sundance last year and Of an Age which opened the 2022 Melbourne International Film Festival before winning the prize for Best Australian Film at CinefestOz.

Filmed in Stolevski’s birth country of Macedonia, Housekeeping for Beginners follows Dita, a lesbian who never wanted to be a mother but is forced into raising her dead partner’s two daughters.

The daughters, tiny troublemaker Mia and rebellious teen Vanesa give Dita a hard time, but the unlikely family have to fight to stay together.

Stolevski made the film in ‘verité’ style, which uses overlapping dialogue, hand-held camerawork and purposefully messy framing to allow the viewer to experience the story as the characters do.

“Housekeeping for Beginners is a blackly comic drama that’s something like a cross between the films of Almodovar and David O’Russell,” Adelaide Film Festival CEO and Creative Director Mat Kesting says.

“I can’t wait to share this film with Adelaide audiences.”

“Extraordinary, rich and nourishing cinema, Stolevski’s Housekeeping for Beginners is essential festival viewing,” he says.

Housekeeping for Beginners received production funding from the Adelaide Film Festival Investment Fund. It’s been announced this fund will receive an additional $2 million over four years from the South Australian Government to support SA’s screen industry.

Find out more at adelaidefilmfestival.org.