Two more additions to the AFF 2023 program starring Paul Mescal

Adelaide Film Festival has announced two new films to the Festival line up – both featuring one of the finest actors working in cinema today, Paul Mescal.

After showcasing Mescal’s Academy-Award nominated performance in Aftersun last year, the 2023 Festival will present the first Australian screening of his Telluride Film Festival hit All of Us Strangers, directed by the UK’s Andrew Haigh, last seen at the Adelaide Film Festival with his intensely humane and subtle, Lean on Pete.

A stunning adaptation of by Taichi Yamada 1987 novel Strangers, but this time with the burgeoning love affair transformed into a queer romance, All of US Strangers is replete with emotional and visual resonance as well as superb performances from not only Paul Mescal but also co-stars Andrew Scott, Claire Foy and Jamie Bell.  All of Us Strangers screens at The Piccadilly on October 25 (8.30pm) and October 29 (1.30pm).

From Australian director Garth Davis, director of the Academy-Award nominated Lion, one of the most successful Australian films of all time, comes Foe which will screen on Adelaide Film Festival’s opening weekend. Foe is produced by Anonymous Content Studios and Australia’s Academy-Award nominated See-Saw Films.

Mescal stars in Foe, alongside another Academy Award nominee Saoirse Ronan. The film is a haunting exploration of marriage and identity set in an uncertain world. Foe’s mesmerizing imagery and persistent questions about the nature of humanity (and artificial humanity) bring the not-too-distant future to luminous life.

Foe screens at The Piccadilly on Saturday 21 at 4.00pm at the Piccadilly Cinemas.

Festival CEO & Creative Director Mat Kesting says: “We love Paul Mescal at the Adelaide Film Festival and, in these two films, his incredible range and emotional depth is on full display.  These are two distinctive films that we are very proud to include in the program, direct from their international premieres.”

Adelaide Film Festival has also announced the first of its guests who will be attending screenings.

Renowned for its music film program, this year is no different with Festival guests including two of the original members of The Wiggles, presenting the film about their extraordinary success of decades, Hot Potato: The Story of the Wiggles, piano virtuoso David Helfgott, one of the subjects of the film The Musical Mind: A Portrait in Process,  and the film’s director and producers, Scott Hicks, Kerry Heysen-Hicks and Jett Heysen-Hicks, The Birthday Party’s Mick Harvey and Ian White, director of the film about the seminal Australian band, Mutiny in Heaven, The Royal Hotel director Kitty Green and star Hugo Weaving, director of Housekeeping for Beginners Goran Stolevski, industry great and AFF patron Margaret Pomeranz, artist David Bromley whose life story is told in Light After Dark by director Sean McDonald, who is also a Festival guest, and the Australian director of AFF Competition film Sahela, Joshi Raghu.

Adelaide Film Festival will also once again showcase the works of South Australian filmmakers and among guests are the directors of Speedway, Luke Rynderman and Adam Kamien, and producers Anna Vincent and Bonnie McBride, the directors of You’ll Never Find Me, Indianna Bell and Josiah Allen, director Scott Hicks and producers Kerry Heysen-Hicks and Jett Heysen-Hicks( My Name’s Ben Folds…I Play Piano and  The Musical Mind…A Portrait in Process), documentarians Daniel King (Her Name is Nellie), Marion Pilowsky and Georgia Humphreys (Isla’s Way), and Jolyon Hoff and Hamish Ludbrook-Gibbs (You Should Have Been Here Yesterday).

Adelaide Film Festival is also proud to be presenting Spotlight on Indonesia in partnership with OzAsia Festival.  Six films from one of Australia’s closest neighbours and one of the world’s most dynamic film industries, Indonesia, will screen at the Festival. Guests from Indonesia include director Adriyanto Waskito Dewo (Galang), Theo Gracia Rumansara (Orpa), Yuda Jurniawan Arifianto (The Tone Wheels), star of Like and Share, Jennifer Aurora Ribero, Jury member and Jakart based film curator, Alexander Matius, with other delegates to be announced.

“AFF warmly welcomes local, Australian and international guest to the Festival who will be here to present their films, meet the Festival’s enthusiastic audiences at screenings, events and talks and enjoy South Australia’s warm hospitality,” Mat Kesting says.

“A special welcome to our friends joining us from Indonesia. I continue to be impressed by the cinema that has been produced in Indonesia over recent years. My prediction is that we will see an Indonesian film vying for an Academy Award in the not too distant future!”