First time feature director Glendyn Ivin, whose short film Cracker Bag won the Palme d'Or at the 2003 Cannes Film Festival, reclaimes the Australian landscape in this engrossing and gritty father-son road film based on the award winning novel by Dennis Young.

A desperate father (Hugo Weaving, The Matrix, The Lord of the Rings) takes his ten year old son, Chook (Tom Russell), on the run after committing a violent crime. As the two journey into the desert and an unknown future, their troubled relationship and the need to survive sees them battling the elements and each other. Chook eventually takes control and the choice he is forced to make has a devastating effect on both their lives.

Following the riotous success of his outrageous comedy Borat, Sacha Baron Cohen returns with the highly-anticipated Brüno. Starring as the titular Austrian TV show host, Cohen descends on Europe to cover the latest in prêt-a-porter with his usual in-depth, well-informed reportage.

Looking to improve his profile on the international stage, Brüno decides that his career could enjoy a boost by adopting an African orphan as well as taking his show to the USA. After all, why wouldn’t the American people want to open their arms to an openly-gay Austrian celebrity seeking more fame? Full of brazen and hilarious stunts shot across the world, Brüno is poised to make Borat seem so 2006.

Two divorced men, Mathias (Vincent Lindon) and Antoine (Pascal Elbé), become a modern-day odd couple when they move in together in London's French quarter, along with their two kids. But while establishing house rules is easy, handling relationships with the opposite sex is another matter. Between Antoine, who has learnt to lock down his emotions so as to no longer suffer, and Mathias, who is all too quickly overcome by his, day to day life is not simple.

Life for the two men and their kids is joyful chaos, however domestic bliss is jeopardised and their smart arrangement falls apart when Mathias falls for the charms of Audrey (Virginie Ledoyen), a gorgeous French ex-pat living in London. They are no longer two friends sharing a home, they are a couple breaking up, cheating on each other, getting back together. But Audrey is not a woman to be lied to. Clumsily trying to protect his life with Antoine, Mathias doesn't understand that by not choosing, he risks losing everything: one person's friendship, the other person's love.

French with English subtitles

Lucky Country is a gripping period western and stars Aden Young as Nat, a small landholder barely hanging on to his patch of the bush. His daughter Sarah is just old enough to see herself as a woman, his son Tom just old enough to judge his father as a man. When three ex-soldiers arrive amidst rumours of gold, the group begins to turn on each other, and the cabin becomes a psychological battleground in which Tom's loyalty to his father is put to the ultimate test.

Director Kriv Stenders (Boxing Day, Blacktown) turns away from the rough contemporary look of his recent films to channel the visual traditions of the Heidelberg School. He mixes in a claustrophobic tension, producing a work with richly mythic resonance. Lucky Country places the fear of the bush, of being overmatched by something larger than yourself, back at the centre of Australian culture, suggesting the tenuous way that Australians might ever claim to be at home in this landscape. One day, your luck runs out...

Set in the luxurious demi-monde of pre-First World War Paris, Chéri is the story of the love affair between the beautiful retired courtesan Léa (Michelle Pfeiffer) and Chéri (Rupert Friend), the son of her old colleague and rival, Madame Peloux (Kathy Bates). Léa has educated the spoilt and callow boy in the ways of love, but after six years Madame Peloux has secretly arranged a marriage between Chéri and Edmée (Felicity Jones), daughter of another rich courtesan, Marie Laure (Iben Hjejle).

As the inevitable moment of parting approaches, Léa and Chéri try to come to terms with their imminent separation, but the roots of their life of ease and pleasure reach deeper than even they imagine and they begin to understand, too late, how much they mean to one another.

From the acclaimed director of Mission: Impossible II, Face/Off and Broken Arrow, comes a dazzling, visionary epic based on the legendary Battle of Red Cliff, in which a force of fifty thousand defeated an army of nearly one million.

In 208 A.D., in the final days of the Han Dynasty, shrewd Prime Minister Cao Cao convinced the fickle Emperor Han the only way to unite all of China was to declare war on the kingdoms of Xu in the west and East Wu in the south. Thus began a military campaign of unprecedented scale, led by the Prime Minister, himself. Left with no other hope for survival, the kingdoms of Xu and East Wu formed an unlikely alliance. Numerous battles of strength and wit ensued, both on land and on water, eventually culminating in the battle of Red Cliff. During the battle, two thousand ships were burned, and the course of Chinese history was changed forever. (Cantonese with English subtitles)       

SPECIAL ADVANCE SCREENING EVENT -

Join us  on Friday 17th July @ Cinema Paradiso  for a pre-screening event from  6.00pm featuring  Shanghai Beer*, Wine* plus  sword fight demonstration and lion dance from  6.30pm.Tickets $15.50 | $11.000 concession - now on sale and online.

The evening supported by the  Fosters Group, Ray Hana's Martial Arts Superstore, Reflex and Tetsuko

Andromeda 'Anna' Fitzgerald (Abigail Breslin) is not sick, but she might as well be. By age thirteen, she has undergone countless surgeries, transfusions, and shots so that her older sister Kate (Sofia Vassilieva) can fight the leukemia that has plagued her since childhood. The product of preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD), Anna was conceived as a bone marrow match for Kate - a life role that she has never challenged...until now.

Like most teenagers, Anna is beginning to question who she truly is. But unlike most teenagers, she has always been defined in terms of her sister, and so Anna makes a decision that for most would be unthinkable, a decision that will tear her family apart and have perhaps fatal consequences for her sister she loves. My Sister's Keeper is based on the novel by Jodi Piccoult and examines what it means to be a good parent, a good sister, a good person.

Set across the ethnic and city-suburban divide, Cedar Boys tells the story of three Lebanese-Australian friends who dare to dream of a better life.  Tarek, a young panel-beater struggling to realise his dreams, is offered a chance to set himself up for life. All he has to do is follow a plan to outsmart the cops and a gang of serious criminals. He wants the prize...but is he ready to pay the price?

Cedar Boys is an authentic, compelling and adrenaline charged ride into the lives of young men of Middle Eastern descent today in Sydney. It's the real world - a side we haven't seen. Real and raw, coming directly from an insider's perspective, the film is fueled by hot cars, music, racial tension and sex drive and is a poignant look at young men of Middle Eastern descent under pressure, seeking acceptance by a society they believe excludes them.

The debut feature of writer/director Serhat Caradee, Cedar Boys stars Les Chantery, Waddah Sari and Buddy Dannoun as three friends whose good, but misguided intentions lead them into trouble. Appearing alongside the three local actors are international stars Rachael Taylor, Martin Henderson and Daniel Amalm.

World Premiere at the 2009 Sydney Film Festival

There are documentaries, and there are comedies made to look like docos, and Paper Heart is both. Conceived by comedian Charlyne Yi (30 Rock) and filmmaker Nicholas Jasenovec, it combines elements of reality and fiction in an amusing, meta-referential way.

While making the 'documentary', Charlyne meets actor Michael Cera (Super Bad, Juno) at a party, and they start tentatively dating. The documentary director (played by actor Jake Johnson), knowing a good thing when he sees one, insists on following Charlyne and Michael around. It's a no-brainer, really: She's making a movie about love, and in the meantime starts dating someone? Perfect! 

Tyson is acclaimed indie director James Toback's stylistically inventive portrait of a mesmerising Mike Tyson. Toback allows Tyson to reveal himself without inhibition and with eloquence and a pervasive vulnerability. Through a mixture of original interviews and archival footage and photographs, a startlingly complex, fully-rounded human being emerges.

The film ranges from Tyson's earliest memories of growing up on the mean streets of Brooklyn through his entry into the world of boxing, to his rollercoaster ride in the funhouse of worldwide fame and fortunes won and lost. It is the story of a legendary and uniquely controversial international athletic icon, a figure conjuring radical questions of race and class. In its depiction of a man rising from the most debased circumstances to unlimited heights, destroyed by his own hubris, Tyson emerges as a modern day version of classic Greek tragedy.

Taking Woodstock is the new film from Academy Award® winning director Ang Lee - and it’s a trip! The film is based on the memoirs of Elliot Tiber, who inadvertently played a role in making 1969’s Woodstock Music and Arts Festival into the famed happening it was. Featuring a standout ensemble cast, and songs from a score of ’60s musical icons including The Grateful Dead, The Doors, Jefferson Airplane and Country Joe and the Fish - Taking Woodstock is a joyous voyage to a moment in time when everything seemed possible.

Working as an interior designer in Greenwich Village, Elliot feels empowered by the gay rights movement. But he is also staked to the family business - the El Monaco, a dumpy Catskills motel owned by his overbearing parents. In the summer of 1969, Elliot moves back to the El Monaco and upon hearing that a planned music and arts festival has lost its permit, he calls producer Michael Lang at Woodstock Ventures to offer his family’s motel to the promoters and generate some much-needed business. Elliot also introduces Lang to his neighbor Max Yasgur (Eugene Levy), who operates a 600-acre dairy farm down the road.

Soon the Woodstock staff are moving into the El Monaco - and half a million people are on their way to Yasgur’s farm for '3 Days of Peace & Music in White Lake.' With a little help from his friends, including theatre troupe leader Devon (Dan Fogler), Vietnam veteran Billy (Emile Hirsch) and cross-dressing ex-Marine Vilma (Liev Schreiber) - and a little opposition from townspeople, including Billy’s brother Dan (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) - Elliot finds himself swept up in a generation-defining experience that would change his life - and popular culture - forever.

From the director of the Academy Award® nominated Atonement, Joe Wright, and starring Oscar winner Jamie Foxx and Oscar nominee Robert Downey Jr., comes this poignant and ultimately soaring tale. It is based on an incredible true story of a disenchanted journalist's transformative odyssey through the hidden streets of Los Angeles, where he discovers and builds a most unlikely friendship with a man from those same streets, bonding through the redemptive power of music.

Columnist Steve Lopez (Downey) is at a dead end. The newspaper business is in an uproar, his marriage to a fellow journalist has fallen apart and he can't entirely remember what he loved about his job in the first place. Then, one day, while walking through Skid Row, he sees the mysterious, bedraggled figure Nathaniel Ayers (Foxx), pouring his soul into a two-stringed violin.

At first, Lopez approaches Ayers as just another story idea in a city of millions. But as he begins to unearth the mystery of how this alternately brilliant and distracted street musician, once a dynamic prodigy headed for fame, wound up living in tunnels and doorways, it sparks an unexpected quest. Imagining he can change Ayers life, Lopez embarks on a quixotic mission to get him off the streets and back to the world of music. But even as he fights to save Ayers' life, he begins to see that it is Ayers - with his unsinkable passion, his freedom-loving obstinancy and his valiant attempts at connection and love  - who is profoundly changing Lopez.

From the Academy Award® winning producer and writer of Shine, comes a film based on the runaway best-selling autobiography, Mao's Last Dancer.