Observance.
Australian film Observance is set for its Australian premiere on April 3 after garnering strong reviews on the global festival circuit.
The film will be released in Australia by Umbrella Entertainment with its Australian premiere set for April 3 at the Randwick Ritz, followed by a limited theatrical across the country.
Observance stars Lindsay Farris, Stephanie King, Benedict Hardie, Tom O’Sullivan, Brendan Cowell and features John Jarratt and Roger Ward.
Sterling Cinema’s Sims-Dennett and Josh Zammit wrote and produced the film with Umbrella Entertainment distributing in Australia, Artsploitation in North America and Shoreline Entertainment managing international sales.
The Joseph Sims-Dennett film has toured the global festival circuit including the BFI London Film Festival and Montreal’s Fantasia Film Festival where it met with postive reviews.
The Hollywood Reporter described the film as “One of the most chilling experiences".
Australian director Sims-Dennett said the worldwide response to the small, personal, micro-budget film had been extraordinary.
"To have your work likened to that of Polanski, Lynch and Hitchcock, three directors I greatly admire, by respected publications like Sight & Sound and reviewers including Jason Gorber is both humbling and exciting, and yet also rather daunting,” he said.
The independent film produced on the director’s credit card and filmed over 11 days during the one of the hottest summers in Sydney’s history, has been a labour of love for the director.
Sight & Sound named Observance as it’s number one film in the BFI London Film Festival’s Cult Strand, describing the film as “an intriguing, elliptical enigma” and that “Joseph Sims-Dennett’s Observance brings the paranoid housebound sensibilities of Polanski’s ‘apartment trilogy’ into the twenty-first century”.
The psychological thriller tells of a private investigator embarking on an unusual assignment to observe a woman from an abandoned apartment.
While witnessing bizarre happenings surrounding her, he is unaware the derelict building that he surveys her from has birthed a dark presence which slowly threatens to consume him.