’My Happy Family’, ’House of Others’ in Sydney Film Festival program

Award-winning features My Happy Family and House of Others will represent Georgian filmmaking talent among over 200 films awaiting audiences at this year’s Sydney Film Festival starting next week.

Nana Ekvtimishvili and Simon Gross, recipients of international acclaim for their work on My Happy Family, have been honoured with the selection of their feature for the Official Competition of the festival.

The winners of the goEast Film Festival Best Director award will see their work screen alongside Happy End by Cannes Film Festival award-winning Austrian filmmaker Michael Haneke and The Beguiled by American director Sofia Coppola.

#SydFilmFest Official Competition: My Happy Family (Nana & Simon) On Body & Soul (Enyedi) The Other Side of Hope (Kaurismäki) Pop Aye (Tan) pic.twitter.com/Jw7CXOFWsm

— Sydney Film Festival (@sydfilmfest) May 11, 2017

My Happy Family follows 52-year-old Georgian woman Manana as she decides to move out of her family in search of independent life — a decision met by consternation from her conservative relatives and friends.

The feature was praised as a "touching, gently humorous look at a quest for personal freedom at a most unexpected stage in life” in a preview for the festival.

In total, the Official Competition will include 12 films, as judges of the section mark a decade of awarding the Sydney Film Prize.

In another section of the event, film-goers in Sydney will witness the widely acknowledged directorial and cinematographic value of Rusudan Glurjidze’s acclaimed film House of Others.

A scene from Rusudan Glurjidze’s 2016 feature ‘House of Others’. Photo: Sydney Film Festival.

After the Georgian Civil War of the early 1990s, families on the victorious side are granted the homes of the defeated [...] Now in a time of peace, these families try to embrace their chance to start again, but are haunted by the past”, said the festival’s summary of the film’s plot.

The 2016 feature was honoured with the East of the West Competition Section Award at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival.

In addition, Spanish cinematographer Gorka Gomez Andreu was nominated for the AC Spotlight Award by the American Society of Cinematographers (ASC) for his work on the film.

The co-production between Georgia, Russia, Spain and Croatia was praised by Sydney festival hosts as a "remarkably assured debut” for Glurjidze "that has earned comparisons to the works of [famed late Soviet director Andrei] Tarkovsky and [celebrated Swedish filmmaker Ingmar] Bergman”.

Glurjidze’s work has received praise for its cinematographic value from the American Society of Cinematographers. Photo: Sydney Film Festival.

The film will screen in the section Europe! Voices of Women in Film, highlighting "10 stellar new features from vital European talents” at the annual festival.

The section was designed to focus on women in filmmaking in an attempt to address the question of gender diversity in high-grossing cinema.

The 2017 edition of Sydney Film Festival will run from June 7-18. Organisers have promised visitors "12 days and nights of inspiring and entertaining premieres, talks and parties”.

Screenings of the event will be hosted at the city’s State Theatre, as well as cinemas in the Newtown, Cremorne, Western Sydney and other locations.