The third time is the charm: so the old adage goes, and that’s certainly been the case for the long-awaited, twice-delayed 68th annual Sydney Film Festival, which opened November 3 at the iconic Sydney State Theatre with a packed house watching Western Sydney-set drama, Here Out West.

The prestigious festival – which was canceled altogether in 2020 due to Covid – usually takes place in June each year, but this year was initially pushed back to August in line with delays from other major festivals, including Cannes. When Sydney unexpectedly went into full lockdown earlier in the year, the date was pushed back again. But a happy ending prevailed over the virus, and on the opening night of the Festival, the state of New South Wales was celebrating in more ways than one – fully out of lockdown, with over 80% of the population fully vaccinated. Audiences embraced mask-wearing and waited patiently in long lines to provide proof of vaccination before the opening night movie. As festival director Nashen Moodley declared, “The Festival arrives at a historic and celebratory time for the city, as we come together again with people we have desperately missed, and in the places that we yearn to return to – cinemas!”

Here Out West – a collection of stories from eight talented Western Sydney writers that interweave characters and stories connected through eight different cultural backgrounds and nine different languages – was well represented on opening night with an impressive list of new and diverse talent, including directors Fadia Abboud and Julie Kalceff, producers Annabel Davis, Sheila Jayadev and Bree-Anne Sykes, writers Nisrine Amine, Bina Bhattacharya, Matias Bolla, Claire Cao, Arka Das, Dee Dogan, Vonne Patiag and Tien Tran, and cast members Mia-Lore Bayeh, Leah Vandenberg, Gabrielle Chan, Jing-Xuan Chan, Christine Milo, Brandon Nguyen, Christian Ravello, Khoi Trinh and De Lovan Zandy.

While international stars were absent due to the country’s strict border policies, A-list patrons of the festival – including Nicole Kidman, Rose Byrne, Sam Neill, Jack Thompson, Gillian Anderson, Hugo Weaving, Damon Herriman and David Wenham – were featured at the start of each film in a moving video about the power of storytelling, Other well-known Aussies showed up in person, including competition jury President, director David (Animal Kingdom) Michod, and Aussie actor Simon Baker, whose film High Ground topped the local box office earlier this year. “I feel quite privileged to sit on this jury,” Baker says. “It’s pretty great to sit with people in your industry and debate the finer aspects of the craft.” Michod added, “It’s so important to have the festival back. Given this is where I live, it makes me feel really good.”

The two-and-a-half-year gap since the last in-person festival provided a unique opportunity for the programming team to secure some of the year’s most anticipated films from Venice, Cannes and Toronto. The delay resulted in the loss of 20 films that had been previously secured, but also led to 30 new films, including Wes Anderson’s The French Dispatch, Venice Best Director prize-winner Jane Campion’s The Power of the Dog, Denis Villeneuve’s star-studded epic Dune, and the shockingly intense Cannes Palme d’Or winner Titane, which, according to the Sydney Morning Herald, saw thirteen audience members faint at the first Festival screening.

The wait for the Festival seemed well worth it, as it served up a rich feast of 233 films from 69 countries, encompassing 111 features, 50 documentaries and 72 shorts. “You have some of the greatest filmmakers of our time, really distinctive voices, all together in one program,” Moodley acknowledged. “It’s a real joy to bring all those films together in one festival.”

He’s referring to the mind-blowing list of great foreign filmmakers all in the same line-up, including Pedro Almodóvar with his Spanish Oscar-contender Parallel Mothers, Paolo Sorrentino with his Italian Oscar entry The Hand of God, along with films from Jacques Audiard, Ildikó Enyedi, Asghar Farhadi, Miguel Gomes, Ryusuke Hamaguchi, Mia Hansen-Løve, Mahamat-Saleh Haroun, Oliver Hermanus, Heddy Honigman, Avi Mograbi, Jafar Panahi, Christian Petzold, Mohammad Rasoulof, Paul Schrader, Céline Sciamma, Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Frederick Wiseman, Jasmila Žbanić and Zhang Yimou.

Another highlight of the festival was the long-awaited Sydney premiere of the outback Western, The Drover’s Wife: The Legend of Molly Johnson, written, directed by and starring First Nation actress Leah Purcell, whose popular TV series Wentworth had also just wrapped its final season to record audiences. The film had been pushed back since its SXSW premiere in Austin, Texas, in February and will not get its official release until mid-2022, but the exuberant Sydney-based actress introduced her film as “my gift to you,” and was visibly emotional when her return to the stage for a short Q&A after the film was greeted with a standing ovation.