#hraff 2017

Quest celebrates love in the face of adversity. A staggering achievement, both by the filmmaker and the family.

Nominated for the Grand Jury Prize at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, debut director Jonathan Olshefski’s Quest is a towering tribute to love.

Shot in a predominantly African-American neighbourhood in North Philadelphia over the course of ten years and taking in both terms of…

HRAFF review: Check It

When the going gets gets tough, the tough get going in street-fighting gang Check-it. A HRAFF highlight.

A short stroll away from the maximum security of the White House, the streets of Washington DC can be a dangerous place for African-American LGBTIQ youth. So much so that just over ten years ago, one group of violently bullied teenagers took it upon themselves to form a gang, the Check-it, to…

Tanna plays like a Polynesian Romeo and Juliet, except the star-crossed lovers at the centre of this story are from the same tribe. Australian documentarians Bentley Dean and Martin Butler keep the narrative simple and ramp up the atmospherics in their fiction debut.

On Tanna, one of the Vanuatu islands in the South Pacific, the peaceful Yakel tribe live together in harmony, the only blight on…

HRAFF review: The Opposition

A rollercoaster ride as a PNG community fights for its rights against Australian hotel developers. Hollie Fifer announces herself as a great talent.

In a case of life imitating art, which also happens to be real life, Australian filmmaker Hollie Fifer’s documentary about the unlawful destruction of Papua New Guinean community in favour of an Australian-based five-star hotel developer, The…