Australian and NZ films! Easy, head to Saint-Tropez, cinema Le Star.
After 26 years of the Festival des Antipodes in the magnificent and legendary cinema on Place des Lices, it's undergoing a makeover, will reborn bigger, more modern, and worthy of the history of Saint-Tropez and cinema. While this renovation is underway, let's meet at Le Star cinema, ideally located near the superb Museum of the Gendarmerie and Cinema, where you can follow Louis de Funès in The Gendarme of Saint-Tropez, swim with the sublime Romy Schneider in The Swimming Pool, or dance furiously with Brigitte Bardot in And God Created Woman. And upon leaving the Museum, you can head straight to the ends of the world to explore not enough known fabulous antipodean cinematography and let your curiosity carry you away to discover Australian and New Zealand films, the immensity of this Terra Australis, the telluric energy of the country with the long white cloud through a wide range of feature-length and short films, documentaries, encounters, and of course, a beautiful exhibition this year in a place full of charm and history, the Vasserot washhouse. Many thanks to Céline Emery-Demion (Red Dunes Gallery, Mougins) and her eclectic and refined selection of pictorial works by Aboriginal peoples.
To whet your appetite, let's sneak a few insider tips about this 2025 edition. One of the pillars of this program, the Antipodes Juniors selection, always present, will once again feature around fifteen short films in competition, presented to the insight of nearly a hundred high school students, from the Lycée du Golfe de Saint-Tropez, the Lycée de Lorgues, and the Lycée de La Coudoulière, who traditionally make up a serious jury, aware of its responsibility to select the recipient of the Nicolas Baudin Prize.
With or without you
And among the works that will arrive in Saint-Tropez, taking you on a journey to Australia, are two films that echo each other, one darker, the other brighter, but both equally moving: He Ain't Heavy by David Vincent-Smith, which received the 2025 Cannes Ecrans Séniors Prize in May, and With or Without You by Kelly Schilling, which will be screened in the presence of its producers, Su Armstrong and Brian Rosen. Natalie Bailey's powerful, piquant comedy Audrey, starring Jackie van Beek as an exuberant mother dreaming of becoming a movie star and who decides to replace her injured daughter! Saara Lamberg's astonishing, ironic, and sensitive new film Coma, which puts us in the shoes of a person in a coma who hears everything but can't respond. Tori Garrett's beautiful and serious film Don't Tell, about abuse in the church, a subject that is sure to resonate in France as well. And who knows, maybe even a great premiere. And on the New Zealand side, an immersion in the 1950s and a reformatory for maladjusted young girls relocated to an abandoned island with the superb We Were Dangerous by Josephine Stewart Te-Whui.
Ellis Park
Not forgetting the documentaries, and our ‘Coup de Coeur’, Ellis Park by Justin Kurzel, discovered at the Melbourne Film Festival, which takes us on a journey with Nick Cave's sidekick, musician Warren Ellis, who shows us his world and the amazing shelter for animals rescued from traffickers or accidents that he created with passionate veterinarian Fenke den Haas in Sumatra. Also, in the presence of the director, This Jungo Life, a unique, intimate, and human documentary shot with an iPhone by Australian David Fedele, gets up close and personal with young refugees and asylum seekers from Sudan who live and sleep on the streets in Morocco, forced to flee violence and instability in Libya and unable to return home because of the ongoing war.
But shh, we won't tell you everything right away! So, see you in Saint-Tropez from October 16 to 19 at the Le Star cinema for an exceptional 27th edition of the Festival des Antipodes.
Bernard Bories AM
President of Cinéma des Antipodes
