Sydney Film School

Sydney Film School Festival has a history of high calibre key note speakers chosen each year equally for their ability to inspire passion as for their insight into the realities of the film culture of Australia.

After Gillian Armstrong, Phillip Noyce, Bruce Beresford, George Miller, Bob Connolly, Philip Hearnshaw and Tom Zubrycki,  it is our great pleasure to have a renowed Australian director Ray Lawrence as our 12th SFS Festival keynote speaker.

An Australian film director Ray Lawrence was born in England and moved to Australia at age 11. All his films are made in Australia with predominantly Australian casts and have been some of the most critically acclaimed works in Australian cinema. He is famous for his insistence on "complete creative control", one-take shoots and use of natural light.

Lawrence's unique cinematic style has established him as one of the most respected dramatic directors of contemporary Australian cinema. While only producing three films in his 25 year career as a feature film director, all of his features have meditated around the slippery and often painful nature of 'real' human interaction. It is Lawrence's ability to illustrate intensely personal interactions between characters as they navigate through the less than 'cinematic' terrain of real life situations that has engaged his audience and earned the respect among cinema goers and critics alike.