• The docu-drama won the Best Picture Award and a cash prize of $41,000.

A documentary drama titled ‘The Mother of All Lies’ by Moroccan filmmaker Asmae El Moudir won the top prize at the 70th Sydney Film Festival (SFF) which included an award for Best Picture, a cash award of A$60,000 ($41000) and an appraisal by the jury head Anurag Kashyap for “the courage of choosing a theme perhaps willfully obliterated from public memory”.

The film which explores the 1981 massacre in Casablanca through interviews and interactions with the director’s family and former neighbors, using tiny models of them and a miniature set of their former street made by her father earned El Moudir Best Director when it was premiered in Un Certain Regard at Cannes.

During the official closing night of the SFF at The State Theatre, a series of prizes were presented on Sunday, 18th June with further screenings of popular films to be aired on Monday. 

“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).

Also, Against The Tide, a documentary directed by Indias Sarvnik Kaur that explores two indigenous Mumbai fishermen affected by declining fish numbers despite very different approaches to their trade scooped the A$40,000 ($27,400) Sustainable Future Award, the largest environmental prize award in the world. The money was donated by five environmental activists.

Five awards were given for short films as well. The AFTRS Craft Awards for the best practitioner (a A$7,000 cash prize) was awarded to Kalu Oji, Faro Musodza, and Makwaya Masudi, screenwriters for “What’s In a Name?” Robyn Liu, lead actor in ‘The Dancing Girl and the Balloon Man’ scooped the first Event Cinemas Rising Talent Award with a cash prize of A$7,000.

The A$7,000 Dendy Live Action Short Award was awarded to “The Dancing Girl and the Balloon Man,” directed by David Ma. The A$7,000 Rouben Mamoulian Award for best director was presented to Sophie Somerville, director of “Linda 4 Eva,” while the A$5,000 Yoram Gross Animation Award was awarded to “Teacups,” directed by Alec Green and Finbar Watson.

According to Frances Wallace, CEO of Sydney Film Festival, “This year’s festival was a huge success with a great number of film fans returning to the cinemas in 2023 attending over 400 film screenings, special events and talks. This year we presented 242 incredible films from across the globe and audiences were eager to take part in the festivities with over 100 sold-out sessions.”

The event, which took place between June 7 and 18, will now travel. As part of the Traveling Film Festival, selections will be screened at seven New South Wales locales, including Newcastle, Orange, Port Macquarie, and Sawtell, through October 2023.