I got to do something a little different last night – I went to the 2025 Sydney Film Festival for the very first time.
I was invited to raise a toast to the very glamorous The Glendronach Lounge at the festival, in celebration of the distiller’s new partnership with the event.
The Lounge is set in the atmospheric basement of Sydney Town Hall.
I took my friend Claudia along (who had sworn off the booze for the month, poor her) to enjoy a pre-screening cocktail and whisky tasting. Well, she got to smell the whiskies and declared them delicious from an olfactory perspective.
After being given an exclusive first look at The Glendronach’s soon-to-be-released expressions, we headed over to a screening of at the gloriously old-world State Theatre of Christian Petzold’s Mirrors No.3.
The Cannes-selected drama is among five films up for the festival’s top prize of $60,000.
It’s about a depressed piano student from Berlin called Laura who takes a trip with her musician boyfriend Jakob to the countryside (pictured main).
A car crash kills Jakob and Laura is taken in by a witness to the accident, Betty, who lives nearby.
Laura begins to recover from the trauma and falls in love with her new rural life. Betty’s husband Richard and son Max arrive on the scene and it becomes apparent that the family is keeping a tragic secret …
As is often the way with arty films, there was no satisfying resolution to the story, but we enjoyed it all the same.
Then we sat drinking tea afterwards in the very stylish The Grounds, which feels a bit like you’ve been transported to England in the 1920s.
The venue is so popular during the day that you have to queue for ages to get in, but it was very peaceful at 8pm on a Tuesday night.
We forgot to take a selfie, but I swear it all happened.
It’s so cosy in bed. I don’t want to get up. But I must.
Song of the day: Fleetwood Mac “Little lies”
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