Standing Room Magazine.

Author: joshua-bonador

  • What We’re Watching At Sydney Film Festival

    What We’re Watching At Sydney Film Festival

    By Joshua Bonador

    It feels like everyone and their mum’s dog has a Letterboxd account now and while I might sound cynical about that, I assure you I’m actually glad! Film culture currently feels more alive than ever, whether that’s audiences racing to the Letterboxd review section with a perfectly timed one-liner or booking time off work just to watch the Oscars–or is this just my roommates? Either way, the Sydney Film Festival is back in town from June 3rd to the 14th showcasing Sundance, Cannes and other international film festival debuts alongside some really interesting retrospectives via their ‘Sartorial: Fashion on Film’ program. Here are a few of my picks that’ll hopefully pique your interest and get butts in theatre seats for the love of film! 

    Filipiñana
    Dir. Rafael Manuel

    17 year-old Isabel relocates to Manila from her rural Ilocos to become the newest ‘tee-girl’ at an overtly swanky country club with a checkered past. Expanding on the concept from his 2020 short film of the same name, Filipino director Rafael Manuel’s debut feature explores the effects of colonialism through the satirical lens of a Manila golf resort, where elaborate musical ceremonies, gaudy flight attendant-esque uniforms and superfluous jobs like ‘tee-girl’ are the everyday. Honestly, when I first spotted this on the program I couldn’t have been more stoked (as a Filipino, how couldn’t I?!) to see my people getting some shine, especially through a story examining some genuine pains from the past. From the promotional shots and teaser trailers all I’m seeing so far is, as short-sighted it may sound, ‘Filipino Saltburn’ but the costuming and movements of the country club staff seem so deliberately unnerving that I’m certain we’re in for a crazy one here.

    Sessions for Filipiñana are set on the nights of the 7th and 11th of June

    Sheep in the Box
    Dir. Hirokazu Kore-eda

    Legendary Japanese filmmaker Hirokazu Kore-eda comes through with another original family-driven drama piece, this time following a grief-struck family that seeks emotional relief in an AI-generated humanoid replicant of their deceased son. Kore-eda’s modern works should be familiar with the devout SFF attendees with 2018 and 2023 masterpiece entries ‘Shoplifters’ and ‘Monster’, respectively, all receiving critical acclaim. While I can recognise the ubiquity that AI is seeing in our lives at the moment, I find myself particularly cautious with any creative work that wants to speak on it it because they’ve always come out so oppressively on-the-nose. My biases towards Kore-eda however cannot be shaken and I’m going all-in on this because when has a family drama of his ever not delivered? I expect the child actors to be unbelievably fantastic beyond their years and have me sobbing as if I’d lost a child myself.

    You can catch ‘Sheep in the Box’ (and me, you best believe) at any of the sessions on the 9th, 10th and 14th of June.

    Marc by Sofia
    Dir. Sofia Coppola

    In her first ever non-fiction feature film, Sofia Coppola has longtime friend, none other than fashion juggernaut, Marc Jacobs talk shop all in the lead up to his 2024 “paper doll” runway show. Absolutely not a tourist in the fashion world herself, Sofia Coppola, has had a keen eye for detail with the costuming in her works, be it only using cotton fabrics in 2010’s ‘The Beguiled’ to respect historical accuracy or having Manolo Blahnik do all the footwear in her iconic 2006 ‘Marie Antoinette’. It could really only be described as a match made in heaven having these two titans of their respective crafts talk through the the creative process while deep-diving into the storied life of Marc Jacobs in a way only Sofia Coppola ever could.

    Sessions are filling up by the second but you can catch ‘Marc by Sofia’ on the 6th, 11th and 13th of June.

    Notebook on Cities and Clothes
    Dir. Wim Wenders 

    German auteur and European king of the road genre Wim Wenders gets a retrospective spot on the SFF2026 program with his 1989 documentary where interviews with the Japanese patron saint of fashion Yohji Yamamoto are spliced together with contemplative reflections on the concept of identity and its affected state in the birth and rise of cinema and fashion.

    After making a glorious comeback to film with his post-COVID debut ‘Perfect Days’ (also a highlight of SFF2023), Wim Wenders is a name film lovers new and old have now got on the forefront of their brains and what better way to get another public helping of him. Expect long-form shots out the windshield on a Tokyo freeway while Wenders, almost jaded, muses about how “Identity is out of fashion. Then what is en vogue? If not ‘fashion’ itself.”

    Sessions for ‘Notebook on Cities and Clothes’ can only be found on June 7th

  • brat and it’s completely different because it’s the moment but it’s still brat

    brat and it’s completely different because it’s the moment but it’s still brat

    By Josh Bonador

    Preparing to pen thoughts on The Moment, the new film by Charli XCX, I intended to open up with a definition of brat and paint a pretty picture of the zeitgeist circa June 2024. But why bother? You lived it! I know you did! Your mother’s dog’s girlfriend lived it! You’re reading this on Standing Room Magazine via Instagram link, you were surely tapped in. Even Kamala Harris was tapped in for heaven’s sake. 

    Regardless, for the liars out there, I’ll rewind for a second: Lime green was chic, Von Dutch was on repeat 24/7 and you’d stand behind people in queues spotting the time displayed on their phone in low-resolution Arial font. The brat summer became a world recognised cultural phenomenon that unified wildly different camps and pulled them all into Charli XCX’s nightclub. From online music nerd cave dwellers who evangelised her 2016 project Vroom Vroom to the entire queer community to damn near every twenty-or-thirty-something alive, the world was obsessed with brat. Now Charli XCX, with collaborator Aidan Zamiri on directorial duties, is ready to usher in the sunset with The Moment. 

    Told through the lens of a satirical mockumentary, The Moment sees Charli XCX play a fictionalised version of herself during the tail-end of brat summer as she attempts to cram rehearsals, brand promotions, me-time and the filming of a concert film mere weeks before the brat arena tour. The film feels reminiscent of a Safdie brothers thriller as Charli’s steadily declining mental health is pushed to centrestage, complete with voyeuristic handheld camera angles against a pulsing but contemplative soundtrack scored not by Daniel Lopatin, but by brat’s executive producer A.G Cook. 

    Funnily enough, the music of brat doesn’t really make much of an appearance barring some pivotal scenes, but instead Charli’s story is soundtracked by filthy four-to-the-floor beats and tender synth drones. It’s a sonic aesthetic that mirrors the nightclub experience with original tracks like Removal and Dread perfectly capturing the feeling of stumbling home during a 5 a.m. sunrise, ears ringing and the strange sensation of being in freefall once you collapse into bed. 

    “It’s supposed to feel like a nightclub” demands Charli’s creative director and friend Celeste, played by Hailey Benton Gates, as creative differences brew with “ick”-personified and concert film director Johannes Godwin with a fantastic love-to-hate performance by Alexander Skarsgård. In a film stacked with exaggerated caricatures of “”real”” people, Skarsgård fully commits with chewing, no gorging on the scenery, at every opportunity and delivers a performance I can’t help but praise through slightly gritted teeth. Conversely, Gates acts as the voice of reason for Charli, remaining unwaveringly loyal to her as everyone ruthlessly seeks a piece of her. The friction between the two creative forces generates most of the film’s genuine tension, and the roles of each character become increasingly clear to Charli: the zombified prolonging of brat summer via Johannes and his commercial concert film or the definitive end of a golden era via Celeste’s steadfast pursuit of creative integrity. 

    On the acting front, Charli genuinely knocks it out of the park despite the script’s demands of that she appear dumbstruck or flustered at every corporate-driven decision presented to her be it, a new brat Magnum flavour, the idea of a queer-people-only bank account or, perhaps most egregious, capitalising the B in brat (gasp!) While it’s clear she’s mostly the butt-end of the joke for much of the film’s runtime, Charli’s unfiltered sincerity juxtaposed against everyone else’s idiocy make genuine laughs, even if we slowly watch the stress manifest across her face. 

    Easily the crowning jewel of the film is its end sequence where the true intent behind Charli’s decision to make this project becomes clear. With tongue-bursting-through-cheek humour, I couldn’t help but be totally impressed with what she’s achieved artistically with this film, especially when the last time we saw a pop artist attempt something remotely similar we got The Weeknd’s utterly masturbatory Hurry Up Tomorrow. The Moment ultimately sees Charli XCX choose to let brat be a flash in the pan and not have its reanimated corpse desperately clinging to relevancy. It’s being comfortable with whatever her loyal fans want it to be, relinquishing control, but never letting you forget that she’s still quietly in the driver’s seat.