THE SYDNEY FILM PRIZE
On awarding the Sydney Film Prize to Italian filmmaker Paola Cortellesi’s There’s Still Tomorrow, the Jury said in a joint statement:
“We had the honour and great pleasure to experience the 12 outstanding films that comprised this year’s Official Competition. At times loud and bombastic, while at others, fiercely intimate, this selection is a testament to theatrical cinema’s contemporary power.
We commend the entire team at Sydney Film Festival for this year’s wonderfully curated selection of films. We congratulate every filmmaker here, with gratitude to their tireless work. Each film in Competition embraced the human spirit with uncompromising artistry, unafraid. Sitting together with the audience at the gorgeously preserved State Theatre, for us this was a path breaking journey of new encounters that conjured cinematic traditions from around the world.
We award the prize to a film that welcomes audiences into one of the historic cradles of cinema. Set in post-War Italy, Paola Cortellesi’s debut feature, C’è ancora domani (There’s Still Tomorrow) feels intensely relevant today. We relive every woman’s struggle for equality through Cortellesi’s “Delia,” we face the brutal cycles of domestic violence with an immense empathy that ultimately proclaims and affirms the virtues of democracy. C’è ancora domani deftly weaves humour, style, and pop music into a dazzling black-and-white cinematic event, then it delivers an ending that will take your breath away.”
A box office phenomenon in its native Italy, where it outperformed Barbie and Oppenheimer, There’s Still Tomorrow is a moving, empowering melodrama about an industrious woman (played by the director herself) in post-WWII Rome.
The Festival Jury was comprised of Bosnian writer and director Danis Tanović as Jury President, joined by Indonesian director Kamila Andini, Australian producer Sheila Jayadev, US producer Jay Van Hoy, and Australian director Tony Krawitz.
Previous winners: The Mother of All Lies (2023); Close (2022); There Is No Evil (2021); Parasite (2019); The Heiresses (2018); On Body and Soul (2017); Aquarius (2016); Arabian Nights (2015); Two Days, One Night (2014); Only God Forgives (2013); Alps (2012); A Separation (2011); Heartbeats (2010); Bronson (2009); and Hunger (2008).
The competition is endorsed by FIAPF, the regulating body for international film festivals, and is judged by a jury of five international and Australian filmmakers and industry professionals.
