Sydney Film Festival
Dates: June 5–16
Locations: Sydney. Some titles screen later in regional centres as the Travelling Film Festival.

German Film Festival
Dates: May 21–June 12
Locations: Sydney, Canberra, Melbourne, Perth, Adelaide, Brisbane, Byron Bay.

It’s film festival season again. Scrub that. These days there’s always a cinematic celebration or two running somewhere around the country, with events big, medium and small scattered throughout the calendar. If you wanted to launch a new one – and people keep having a go – then it would be hard to find a vacant slot.

We’ve already had this year’s ever-growing Alliance Française French Film Festival, rapidly followed by a Spanish event run by the cinema and distribution chain Palace, an Irish event in Melbourne and Sydney only, and in its second year, Cinema Reborn, devoted to classics in pristine prints, many of them recently restored.

The 3 Penny Opera

Meanwhile another major Palace event, the German Film Festival, runs from May 21 until June 12. This year’s program includes two films themed around Brecht’s celebrated The Threepenny Opera (the new Mack the Knife...