Two of the country’s greatest actresses, Margot Robbie and Sarah Snook, joined thousands of film fans when Tropfest returned to a buzzy Centennial Park in Sydney on Sunday night.
Fresh off successfully launching Wuthering Heights in cinemas, Robbie was the head of a jury at what has long been called the world’s largest short film festival.
“I was honoured to receive the offer,” she said on the black carpet. “I thought, ‘if there’s any way I can make it so I can be home at that time, I definitely want to be a part of it’.”
Joining Robbie to judge the 16 short films selected from more than 700 entries was Snook, the Succession and All Her Fault star who remembered going to Tropfest when she was a “very green newbie actor” and was thrilled and overwhelmed by the experience.
“I really like how it fosters emerging talent,” she said. “Imagine being a filmmaker and showing your film in front of twenty or forty thousand people. That’s extraordinary.”
Also on the jury were Rocketman star Taron Egerton (he has been in Sydney shooting the Netflix action-thriller Apex and he will be back soon to shoot another film, Cockroach, with Chris Hemsworth), producer Bruna Papandrea (The Last Anniversary) and writer-directors Danny Philippou (Bring Her Back) and Dylan River (Thou Shalt Not Steal).
Avatar director James Cameron was due to be at the park but he was caught up editing, so he was judging the films remotely using YouTube’s global livestream of the event from Los Angeles.
After fears the festival had not survived COVID, an influential alliance from business, sport and entertainment formed the non-profit Tropfest Foundation last year to bring it back. Sarah Murdoch chairs the board. Festival founder John Polson, Peter V’landys, Richard Weinberg and Bryan Brown are board directors.
The little-known makers of the 16 finalists were centre stage in the park, all hoping for the type of career boost that Tropfest has been giving film and TV makers over the years.
Among those helped by the festival over the decades are Justin Kurzel (The Narrow Road to the Deep North), Emma Freeman (The Newsreader), Nash Edgerton (Mr Inbetween), his brother Joel Edgerton (Train Dreams), Alethea Jones (Peacemaker), Robert Connolly (The Dry) and Daina Reid (The Handmaid’s Tale).
Tropfest has also encouraged major Australian acting talents, including Sam Worthington, Rebel Wilson, David Wenham, Mia Wasikowska, Asher Keddie, Stephen Curry, Damon Herriman and Murray Bartlett.
Polson founded the festival at the Tropicana Caffe in Darlinghurst in 1993.
It expanded from the cafe to the street outside and then to live events, attracting tens of thousands of fans in Rushcutters Bay Park, the Domain, Centennial Park and Parramatta Park. After a seven-year intermission, it has returned to Centennial Park.
In a neat touch, the Tropicana Caffe is among the venues around the country livestreaming the festival via YouTube.
The festival’s handsome prize pool this year is $50,000 for the winner, $30,000 for second, $20,000 for third and a Chery car for “a filmmaker whose work embodies ambition, innovation and creative excellence”.
Polson said the new Tropfest had a year-round focus on encouraging emerging talent that included the two days of Roughcut talks on Friday and Saturday, a scholarship program to tee up mentors and film meetings for two finalists and the return of Trop Jnr for budding filmmakers aged 15 and under.
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