Attenburg Australian premiere at Sydney Film Festival

The onslaught is on. Sydney Film Festival's artistic director, Clare Stewart, has done her global rounds of international film festivals, and now has a complete pageantry of movies at the ready for Sydney movie buffs to devour. This will be the 58th Sydney Film Festival and it kicks off on Wednesday June 8 to Sunday June 19.

The festival will be showcasing feature films, documentaries, short films and animations across the city at the State Theatre, Event Cinemas George Street, Dendy Opera Quays and the Art Galleries of NSW and UNSW. Among the selection of this highly eclectic international program is a brand new Greek film, Attenburg, directed by Athina Rachel. Rachel was the producer of the highly successful and award-winning Greek film Dogtooth, and Attenburg has already secured an award with Ariane Labed winning Best Actress.

Attenburg is set in a Greek factory town by the sea, and it follows 23 year-old Marina (Ariane Labed), an unpredictable creature whose isolation and limited human interaction have led her to mimic animal behaviour as portrayed in the David Attenborough documentaries she so hungrily devours.

"The title Attenburg comes from a play on words on the name Richard Attenborough," explained Clare Stewart, "and the performance by Ariane Labed is quite extraordinary, because it requires a real unique talent for physicality and movement, particularly when she is impersonating the animals from the Attenborough docos." Although it is a humorous movie as Stewart explained, "It's not a laugh out loud film, it's got funny moments of course, but it's also very thoughtful and really moving, and I knew immediately it had to be part of my program."

There's also a competition being held as part of the festival in which Attenburg is included. The Official Competition winner will receive a $60,000 cash prize in recognition of courageous, audacious and cutting-edge film-making. Sydney Film Festival: www.sff.org.au Bookings: tix.sff.org.au The full program will be revealed on Wednesday 11 May.