68th Sydney Film Festival

The 68th annual Sydney Film Festival was held from 3 to 21 November 2021. The festival, which traditionally takes place in June, was postponed to August 2021 and eventually rescheduled to be held in November due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The film screenings were staged as a "hybrid" of in-person and digital. It marked as the first major festival following the lifting of the lockdown in New South Wales.

Anthology film Here Out West opened the festival, while Wes Anderson's The French Dispatch was the closing film. Drama film There Is No Evil won the most prestigious award, Sydney Film Prize.

Sydney Film Prize
The following were named as the festival juries:
 * David Michôd, Australian writer and director – Jury President
 * Simon Baker, Australian actor
 * Kyas Hepworth, National Indigenous Television Head of Commissioning and Programming
 * Maya Newell, Australian filmmaker
 * Clara Law, Hong Kong-Australian filmmaker

In competition
The following films were selected for the main international competition:


 * Highlighted title indicates Sydney Film Prize winner.

Awards
The following awards were presented at the festival:
 * Sydney Film Prize: There Is No Evil by Mohammad Rasoulof
 * Sydney UNESCO City of Film Award: Karina Holden
 * Documentary Australia Award for Australian Documentary: I'm Wanita by Matthew Walker
 * Sustainable Future Award: Burning by Eva Orner
 * Dendy Awards for Australian Short Films
 * Dendy Live Action Short Award: Peeps by Sophie Somerville
 * Rouben Mamoulian Award for Best Director: Taylor Ferguson for tough
 * Yoram Gross Animation Award: Freedom Swimmer by Olivia Martin-McGuire

Audience Awards
The following films won the Audience Awards, voted by the festival audience.

Best Narrative Feature Top Five

 * Beautiful Minds by Bernard Campan and Alexandre Jollien
 * Wyrmwood: Apocalypse by Kiah Roache-Turner
 * Here Out West by Fadia Abboud, Lucy Gaffy, Julie Kalceff, Ana Kokkinos, and Leah Purcell
 * Friends and Strangers by James Vaughan
 * Quo Vadis, Aida? by Jasmila Žbanić

Best Documentary Top Five

 * Blind Ambition by Robert Coe and Warwick Ross
 * I'm Wanita by Matthew Walker
 * When the Camera Stopped Rolling by Jane Castle
 * The Seeds of Vandana Shiva by James Becket and Camilla Becket
 * Araatika: Rise Up! by Larissa Behrendt and Ithaka by Ben Lawrence