LADIES IN BLACK LEAD OZ PACK AS QUEENS OF U.S. DESERT FEST

Four diverse Australian works will feature at the 30^th Palm Springs International Film Festival (PSIFF), which launches January 3 in California’s upmarket desert enclave on the western edge of the Coachella Valley. Key amongst them is veteran filmmaker Bruce Beresford’s local hit Ladies in Black, which has been honoured as the Closing Night film of the 12-day program. Set to screen 223 films from 78 countries, organisers are predicting close to 140,000 attendees for the anniversary celebrations of one of America’s most respected and relaxed festival events.

The story of the strong-willed retail saleswomen at the forefront of social change in Sydney circa 1959, Ladies in Black was a critical and commercial hit domestically, earning AU$12.5million at the Australian/New Zealand box office and scoring four AACTA Awards, including Best Actress for starlet Angourie Rice. Yet to open in other key global markets, the North American premiere at PSIFF is a strong indication of the potential for the film to play with audiences beyond these shores (pictured, above; from left, Celia Massingham, Rice and Rachel Taylor).

Also enjoying a moment in the Californian film festival sun will be Benjamin Gilmour’s Jirga, screening as part of the festival’s Foreign Film Oscar Submission strand. The AACTA-winning drama follows a former Australian soldier’s return to Afghanistan, where he seeks forgiveness from the family of a civilian man he killed while serving in the war. Writer/director Gilmour, star Sam Smith (pictured, right) and a skeleton crew shot the film guerilla-style in some of Afghanistan’s most dangerous regions, the result being a film of rare emotion, tension and beauty; it had its World Premiere in Toronto to critical acclaim. It is Australia’s official Foreign Film Oscar contender, with large sections of the film in Pashto dialect.

Certain to amp up the party atmosphere will be a retrospective screening of Baz Luhrmann’s breakout 1992 blockbuster Strictly Ballroom. The film, which earned a staggering AU$80million global box office during its initial release, has been slotted into a strand called ‘The Palm Springs Canon’, a celebration of the best of the PSIFF's first 30 years. Luhrmann’s crowd-pleaser will play alongside 32 other established classics, including Ang Lee’s Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon (2000), Krzysztof Kieslowski’s The Double Life of Veronique (1991), Giuseppe Tornatore’s Cinema Paradiso (1988), Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s Amelie (2001) and Christopher Nolan’s Memento (2000).

Rounding out the Antipodean contingent is Jeffery Walker’s Riot, the made-for-television account of the gay activists whose fight to decriminalize homosexuality in mid-70s Sydney led to the birth of the now iconic Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras. Starring Damon Herriman (soon to feature as Charles Manson in Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood), the small-screen movie aired to a national audience via the Australian Broadcasting Corporation in June before earning Herriman (pictured, right; with co-star Xavier Samuels) and co-star Kate Box AACTA Awards last month for their lead performances. It will screen in the PSIFF strand ‘Queer Cinema Today & The Gay!LA’ alongside such festival favourites as Wanuri Kahiu’s lesbian-themed Kenyan film Rafiki and Austrian filmmaker Katharina Mueckstein’s L’Animale, one of the films vying for the festival’s New Voices/New Visions Grand Jury Prize.

The four Australian films will be seen by many of Hollywood’s major players, with studio and agency representatives attending alongside the likes of actors Timothée Chalamet, Glenn Close, Richard E. Grant, Melissa McCarthy and Rami Malek; and, directors Ryan Coogler, Spike Lee, Ali Abbasi, Emilio Estevez and Alfonso Cuarón.

The Palm Springs International Film Festival will launch on January 3 with the Opening Night film, Kenneth Branagh’s All is True, with the festivities concluding January 13 with Ladies in Black; both will screen at Richards Center for the Arts at Palm Springs High School followed by a reception at the Hilton Hotel complex.