Browsing: sydney film festival 2024

While the tension between these two women is a focal point of the film, it is a poignant reminder that the industry intentionally manipulates the lives and experiences of women to distract from the deeply misogynistic foundation it thrives on.

The act of watching the documentary felt pervasive, granting the audience an incredibly intimate dissection of Shiori Itō’s life. She presents traumatising events in such a calm and clinical way through her internal monologue running through the film that you could almost forget she is investigating her own assault.

What ensues is an incendiary and hilarious charting of the real-life story of Kneecap’s rise from playing deadbeat pubs to becoming a symbol of a larger civil rights movement about the Irish language, clashing with Protestant opposition, censorship, paramilitary groups, violent cops and heavy comedowns.

Almost every character in Stress Positions is obsessed with their own image, embodying America’s cultural anxiety of irrelevance in the face of otherness. The film takes place in Brooklyn at the beginning of the pandemic, and follows Terry (John Early) as he imposes a quarantine on himself and his nephew, Bahlul (Qaher Harhash), a 19-year-old Moroccan model.