‘The Mother of all Lies’ Wins Sydney Film Festival top Prize
variety.comPatrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief The Mother of all Lies, a docu-drama film that probes the secrets of Morocco’s 1981 Bread Riots, was Sunday named the best picture at the Sydney Film Festival.
The jury, headed by Anurag Kashyap, called the Asmae El Moudir-directed film “audacious, cutting-edge and courageous.” It presented the A$60,000 ($41,100) cash prize film ahead at the State Theatre ahead of the Australian premiere screening of “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny.” The film, which uses doll-like figurines, recently premiered in Un Certain Regard at Cannes, where it earned the section’s best director prize. “Juxtaposing evidence from barely existent public materials with private family memory, this film reconstructs the history of the state, the family and the individual, in three distinct levels,” said the jury of Kashyap, actor Mia Wasikowska (Australia), film curator and journalist Dorothee Wenner (Germany), writer and director Larissa Behrendt (Australia) and filmmaker Visakesa Chandrasekaram (Australia – Sri Lanka).
The largest prize pool in Sydney Film Festival history was shared by Australian filmmakers Derik Lynch and Matthew Thorne who were awarded the Documentary Australia Award’s $20,000 cash prize for “Marungka Tjalatjunu” (aka “Dipped in Black”), which follows Lynch, a Yankunytjatjara artist, on a road trip back to his country roots (Aputula), as memories from his childhood return.
The 2022 recipient of the A$40,000 Sustainable Future Award, the largest environmental film prize in the world, was Indian director Sarvnik Kaur, for her film “Against the Tide,” an intimate documentary where two fishermen from Mumbai’s indigenous Koli community confront the impact of the changing environment.
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