The VICE Guide to Sydney Film Festival

The Sydney Film Festival program launched yesterday, and tickets are now on sale for all 288 films on the lineup. You've only got 12 days to cram in as much as possible—stressful stuff, if you're so inclined. VICE Video is partnering once more with the festival, which kicks off on June 7. So we got to plan out our schedule a little ahead of time. To help you out, here's our list of must-sees from the local and international directors bringing their films to Sydney.

Always a little bit philosophical, is Terrence Malick. Makes you think. His new film Song to Song, which has been in production for the past five years, promises to be on brand. It's ostensibly a music-driven love story set within Austin's rock scene, but you know there's going to be much more to it than that. We're talking some in-depth realisations about human relationships. Song to Song stars Michael Fassbender, Ryan Gosling, Rooney Mara, and Natalie Portman—and the cameos are just as notable, with Patti Smith, Iggy Pop, and John Lydon all making an appearance.

Australia has all but disowned Julian Assange—it's easy to forget that one of the world's most controversial and influential figures hails from Townsville. In Risk, we have the chance to get to know him, and we're probably not going to like what we see. German director Laura Poitras has been following the Wikileaks founder for six years, and has professed shock over just how much access Assange allowed her into his life. The film is a follow-up to her Oscar-winning Edward Snowden doco Citizenfour, and if you've seen that then you'll know this is worth more than the price of admission.

Kalgoorlie might just be Australia's bawdiest country town, and its citizens have a long and proud history of using all that mining money to buy sex and booze. Nobody knows this better than Madam Carmel, the 70-year-old procuress of Kalgoorlie's longest continuously running brothel. It's been open since 1904, and is housed in a cheerfully tacky pink shed. In The Pink House, filmmaker Sascha Ettinger Epstein spends several years chronicling Carmel and the weird and her employees, revealing the uncertain future of a mining town brothel in the age of online escorts and pornography. Support your local outback documentary maker and buy tickets to this.

As a teenager growing up in isolated Perth, Daniel Monks wondered if there was a place for him in the arts. When a tumour left him physically disabled, Monks became even more alienated. These themes are echoed in the young queer filmmaker's debut sci-fi drama Pulse, in which he plays a gay teenager with a similar disability who is able to transplant his brain into the body of a beautiful young able-bodied girl. As you might expect, the body swap causes more problems than it solves. How often do you see Australian sci-fi like this?

The southern cross has become a symbol of terrifying racism—of tramp stamp tattoos, violence, and Pauline Hanson. Which is a shame because, as We Don't Need a Map explains, the cluster of stars has held deep spiritual significance for Indigenous people over thousands of years. From Warwick Thornton, director of The Sapphires and Samson and Delilah, this documentary takes a long hard look at the constellation's sometimes-distressing history, and its transformation from astrological phenomenon to bogan swastika. Take your racist Aunt to the movies.

In 1991, French writer Michel Houellebecq wrote a landmark essay about art and unhappiness, titled To Stay Alive - A Method. It discussed, among other things, Iggy Pop. Now the musician and writer are friends and collaborators, and in this documentary they discuss what it means to be a writer, to battle mental health issues, and to break out of the ordinary and pursue a creative life. Their discussions are contrasted with the experiences of marginal struggling artists who are battling insecurities and mental health problems. One for anyone who has ever felt like an outsider—so you, probably.

Sydney Film Festival is happening June 7 - 18. Check out the full program here.