Award-winning actor and director Rachel Ward will open this year's Sydney Travelling Film Festival with her brand new unreleased film, Martha's New Coat. The film which has already won critical acclaim at the Dendy Awards will be screened on Friday 5th September at 7.30pm with drinks and nibblies after the show.

The festival of 10 films plus shorts, will be screened in Townsville at the Warrina Cineplex and will be shown over seven days beginning on Thursday the 4th until Wednesday 10th September.

The Sydney Travelling Film Festival, along with Magnetic Times, is offering two bunches of 5 free passes (valued at $45) if you can answer the following question (via email below) before 12noon Thursday the 4th of September. All entries, with the correct answer, will be put into a hat and one lucky winner will be drawn at 1pm on Thursday 4th of September.

The question is....
Who plays Martha in Martha's New Coat?


Martha's New Coat (Synopsis)
It's Martha's birthday and the day is not turning out so well, a girl at school wants to beat her up, her father hasn't been heard from for years, and as for her mother, she hasn't seemed to have registered Martha for a long time. The one bright spot in Martha's domestic life is her little sister Elsie, whose innocence and delight in life is undiminished by her surroundings.

Martha decides to get out of town and seek some excitement on the coast. This is one birthday she doesn't want to forget even if she has to make it memorable herself. Filled with the spirit of adventure Martha decides she doesn't want to ever go back home. Life must be better with her father than with her present but absent mother. Dragging her reluctant little sister along with her, Martha takes off in search of their missing father. But as Martha finally discovers there is more to finding her father than just locating him physically. And there is no such thing as a perfect family.

Introducing Matilda Brown in the lead role of Martha, directed by Rachel Ward and executive produced by Bryan Brown, this new Australian drama will re-introduce to you those adolescent feelings of wanting to be a part of something without realising you already are.

Review by David Stratton, Variety
Ward, who brought a luminous presence to films like "Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid" (1982), "Against All Odds" (1984) and "After Dark My Sweet" (1990), recently appeared with husband Bryan Brown in the TV miniseries of "On the Beach" after a long absence from the small screen.

The couple's daughter, Matilda Brown, plays the title role in "Martha," and creates a wholly believable character, that of an unhappy, moody teenager who yearns for the kind of family life that will always elude her. Brown seems set for a successful acting career on the strength of this intelligent performance. Martha lives in a small town with her sluttish mother, Sarah (Lisa Hensley), who is pregnant by her new lover, Frank (Daniel Wyllie), and her little sister, Elsie (Alycia Debnam). A pale beauty with jet black hair and an eyebrow ring, Martha is a surly loner who rejects the attentions of boys. The town is devoid of entertainment for young people. Still, Martha's looking forward to her birthday treat -- a trip to the seaside. But on the morning in question, Sarah is too hungover and drugged with pills to travel, so Martha makes a snap decision to steal some of Frank's money and take Elsie with her on the bus to the beach. She then decides to go in search of her father, not realizing he has a new life and will not be keen to see her.

The screenplay, by Elizabeth J. Mars, captures the attitudes, speech patterns and concerns of contempo youth; the film has no hint of artifice. The bleak story is leavened with humour, however, and Ward concludes the too-brief drama with an unspoken scene of great sensitivity that allows a measure of hope for the future. Country and Western songs (Martha's favourite) fill the soundtrack of a film handsomely but economically shot on location by Cordelia Beresford; camerawork is hand held, but not annoyingly so. Debnam-Carey is an appealing child actor who inhabits her role with complete conviction, but the success of the film rests on the remarkable Brown's young shoulders. Her mother's direction (which follows her success with last year's award-winning short film, "The Big House") is intelligent and assured. Title refers to a birthday present given to the eponymous heroine by members of her peer group.

Martha's New Coat will screen with the new Australian short film, Clutch.

TICKETS
Tickets are available at the box office during normal cinema times (one week in advance of the festival) or they can be booked via email on info@sydneyfilmfestival.org. Credit card payment is available by phoning (02) 9280 0511.

Single tickets are $10.50 ($8.50 concession) a full subscription to the festival (10 x film pass) is $70 ($65 concession) or a half subscription (5 x film pass) is $45 ($40 concession).

Magnetic Island Film Society members are entitled to a concession rate on presentation of their membership card.


PROGRAM
Thursday 4 September
6.30pm Lost In Mancha
8.30pm Baran

Friday 5 September (opening night with director Rachel Ward)
7.30pm Martha's New Coat

Saturday 6 September
1.00pm Santa Maradona
3.00pm City of God
6.00pm Minor Mishaps
9.00pm Alexandra's Project

Sunday 7 September
1.00pm Open Hearts
3.15pm Saathiya
6.00pm Magdelene Sisters
9.00pm Lost in La Mancha

Monday 8 September
4.00pm Minor Mishaps
6.30pm City of God
9.15pm Baran

Tuesday 9 September
4.30pm Saathiya
7.15pm Open Hearts
9.30pm Santa Maradona

Wednesday 10 September
6.30pm Magdalene Sisters
9.00pm Alexandra's Project


FILM SYNOPSES
Minor Mishaps (Denmark)
Minor Mishaps? Death, terminal illness, marriage breakup and incest both alleged and factual. When Ulla, the matriarch of the family dies in a road accident the family gather for her funeral. Old conflicts and sexual tension threaten to explode in accusations and infidelity. But all is not doom. The lively jibes and insults are punctuated with plentiful incidents of gallows humour and outright belly laughs, striking a perfect Scandinavian balance between darkness and light.

Alexandra's Project (Australia)
Never one to settle into any particular genre, writer/director Rolf De Heer (The Tracker) once again steers us on a different course, this time one which will inspire many a coffee shop conversation - "he's a bastard, she's a bitch" and so on. Alexandra's "project" is riveting in its unfolding, never quite presenting the full story, but feeding just enough information to make sure no one is left cheated. It is a confronting film, uncompromising and often uncomfortable, but as voyeurs in the home of an ostensibly normal couple, we're plunging below the surface down to the ugliness that bubbles beneath. And that can get very ugly indeed - filmink

City of God (Brazil)
Sometimes a movie comes along that just floors you, its images burn so deeply. City of God is such a film. On the slum streets (called favelas) of Rio de Janeiro, the sun and the samba rhythms caress the senses. Children, some as young as nine, walk the streets in gangs, trading jokes and drugs, carrying guns and smiling when they use them. Death has no consequence in this city of God, just a short walk from the resorts that coddle the tourist trade. The only miracle is living past your teens. - Rolling Stone

Open Hearts (Denmark)
Susanne Bier directs this engaging love story, the official Danish nominee for Best Foreign Language Film at the Academy Awards. Open Hearts was made according to the Dogme rules that have governed such recent cinematic efforts as Mifune; one of them is that only natural light is used. The screenplay by Anders Thomas Jensen, based on a concept by Bier, explores the idea that the strangers we meet can alter our lives in ways beyond our imagining. Or as Rav P. S. Berg, a teacher of the Kabbalah, puts it "Every encounter with a stranger is a time to start over." - Spirituality and Health

Santa Maradona (Italy)
Marco Ponti's debut feature gathers its own momentum through bang-bang banter and off-the-cuff visual punchlines. The movie bunks down with a trio of witty twentysomething flatmates as they defer and default their workaday futures ("We don't work, the lease is illegal - technically, we don't exist"), until a romantic entanglement turns defiant inertia into a quarter-life crisis. The script brims with comic repartee worthy of Bottle Rocket, as well as the film's bittersweet eye toward the vicissitudes of friendship. - Vilage voice

Baran (Iran)
From the director of Children of Heaven and The Colour of Paradise, this story focusses on a construction site full of Afghan workers. They mingle uneasily with the Iranian workforce and are forced to hide in panic when building inspectors make their visits.After an accident on the site a builder's child tries to fill his shoes. The child is not strong enough to perform the demanding tasks, but captures the eye of an initially hostile and suspicious Iranian worker, who over time comes around and offers help and protection.This is the beginning of a surprising, touching and delicate relationship between two cultures, one that captures both
parties unaware. - Toronto Film Festival.

Saathiya (India)
A lush and lively production, Saathiya is more than escapism (but it is that too), resting on a solid love story set in the cultural specificity of modern India. Marriage is still the cultural glue for society, and traditions remain important to families. But and they will always clash with the old traditions

Lost in La Mancha (UK)
Failure's fascinating. When it occurs on the set of a multi-million dollar movie starring Johnnie Depp it's nothing short of riveting. This documentary lays bare the glitches, including flash floods which destroy sets and camera equipment, which brought Terry Gilliam's $32mill picture undone.

Magdalene Sisters (Ireland)
About the experiences of a group of young women who find themselves forcibly remanded to life inside an Irish Catholic convent cum sanctuary in 1964. This fictionalised true story deals with real people and real events. The last Magdalene Home was closed in 1996. Director Peter Mullan was inspired to write the film after seeing the Channel 4 documentary Love in a Cold Climate and used video footage in his research. An acclaimed actor himself, the movie's strengths are in its characterisation: he is an actor's director. The performances of the cast, and especially the four girls and Geraldine McEwan as Sr Bridget are all strongly convincing, original and powerful, without sentimentality. As a whole it is harrowing. It is not a movie for the faint-hearted nor for deluded believers, who do not want that belief challenged, of the sovereign rights of the Church to determine the destiny of its devotees. - movie vault