David Easteal

Screenings

2022
International Film Festival Rotterdam / Tiger Competition / Rotterdam, the Netherlands / 26 Jan – 6 Feb
Cinéma du Réel / International Competition / Centre Pompidou, Paris, France / 11 – 20 Mar
FICUNAM – Festival Internacional de Cine UNAM / International Competition / Mexico City, Mexico / 10 – 20 Mar
Art of the Real / Official Selection / Film at Lincoln Centre, New York, USA / 31 Mar – 7 Apr
Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art / Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane, Australia / 10, 22 Apr
Beldocs International Documentary Film Festival / Meteors section / Belgrade, Serbia / 11 – 18 May
Sydney Film Festival / Official Selection / Sydney, Australia / 8 – 19 Jun
Transilvania International Film Festival / Documentary Competition / Cluj-Napoca, Romania / 17 – 26 Jun
Bildrausch Filmfest Basel / International Competition / Basel, Switzerland / 22 – 26 Jun
Dokufest International Documentary Film Festival / View from the World section / Prizren, Kosovo / 5 – 13 Aug
Melbourne International Film Festival / Official Selection / Melbourne, Australia / 4 – 21 Aug
Edinburgh International Film Festival / Postcards from the Edge section / Edinburgh, UK / 12 – 20 Aug
Hong Kong International Film Festival / Documentary Competition / Hong Kong, Hong Kong / 15 – 31 Aug
DMZ International Documentary Film Festival / Global Vision section / Paju & Goyang, South Korea / 22 – 29 Sep
International Film Festival Rotterdam / Return of the Tiger / Rotterdam, the Netherlands / 14 – 16 Oct
Film Fest Gent / Official Selection / Ghent, Belgium / 11 – 22 Oct
Inconvenient Films / International Competition / Vilnius, Lithuania / 8 – 30 Oct
Adelaide Film Festival / Documentary Competition / Adelaide, Australia / 19 – 31 Oct
São Paulo International Film Festival / New Directors Competition / São Paulo, Brazil / 20 Oct – 2 Nov
Belfast Film Festival / Blurred Lines section / Belfast, Northern Ireland / 3 – 12 Nov
Leeds International Film Festival / Official Selection / Leeds, UK / 3 – 17 Nov
Mar del Plata International Film Festival / Altered States Competition / Mar del Plata, Argentina / 3 – 13 Nov
Light Matter Film Festival / Official Selection / Alfred, New York /  4 – 6 Nov
Cinema South Festival / Debut Film Competition / Sderot, Israel / 6 – 10 Nov
Ljubljana International Film Festival / Perspectives Competition / Ljubljana, Slovenia / 9 – 20 Nov
UW Cinematheque / University of Wisconsin, Madison, USA / 17 Nov
Critikat Ciné-Club / Cinéma Les 3 Luxembourg, Paris, France / 22 Nov
National Film & Sound Archive / Documentary of the Month / Canberra, Australia / 24 Nov
Torino Film Festival / New Worlds section / Turin, Italy / 25 Nov – 3 Dec
Muestra de Cine de Lanzarote / International Competition / Lanzarote, Spain / 24 Nov – 4 Dec
Singapore International Film Festival / Undercurrent section / Singapore, Singapore / 24 Nov – 4 Dec

2023
Pingyao International Film Festival / Crouching Tigers competition / Pingyao, Shanxi, China / 14 – 19 Jan
Göteborg Film Festival / Voyage section / Gothenburg, Sweden / 27 Jan – 5 Feb
The Barbican / Experiments in Film / London, UK / 22 Feb
TIFF Cinematheque / MDFF Selects / TIFF Bell Lightbox, Toronto, Canada / 23 Feb
IBAFF Festival Internacional de Cine de Murcia / International Competition / Murcia, Spain / 24 Feb – 4 Mar
Kosmorama Trondheim International Film Festival / Documentary section / Trondheim, Norway / 6 – 12 Mar
Dokumentarfilmwoche Hamburg / Official Selection / Hamburg, Germany / 24 – 30 Apr
Thornbury Picture House / Melbourne, Australia / 13 May
Irish Film Institute / Dublin, Ireland / 13 May
Halifax Independent Filmmakers Festival / Official Selection / Halifax, Canada / 21-24 June
Spectacle Theatre / New York, USA / 4, 12, 31 Aug
Adelaide Cinematheque / Adelaide, Australia / 16 Oct

2024
Spectacle Theatre / Best of Spectacle 2023 / New York, USA / 6, 28 Jan

Streaming
MUBI – worldwide from April 2023

Awards / Acknowledgments

End of Year lists:
Film Comment / Best Undistributed Films of 2022 / No. 1
Cinema Scope / Top 10 of 2022 / No. 10
Sight & Sound / The 50 Best Films of 2022 / No. 25
The Film Stage / Top 50 Films of 2022 / No. 30
The Film Stage / The Best Undistributed Films of 2022

The Film Stage / Best Directorial Debuts of 2023
The Film Stage / Top 50 Films of 2023 / No. 31
The Film Stage / 50 Best 2023 Films You Might Have Missed
The Guardian / 10 Best Australian Films of 2023 / No. 1
Slant Magazine / 25 Best Films of 2023 / No. 14
Variety / The Best Documentaries of 2023
The Saturday Paper / Best Films 2023

Bildrausch Filmfest Basel 2022 / Peter Liechti Award

Statement by jury member Norika Sefa:
This was an experience. A physical experience because of the unexpected freedom that I, as a viewer, felt in a film that upends conventional narrative expectations. It’s a film that requires the openness of the mind and the heart.
It’s a film that transports ideas, gives suggestions- and because of its rhythm, operating with slow and small reveals, it slowly engages you into an almost transcending frequency where even the most ordinary little movements, words, and looks start to have multiple layers and meaning.
This year the Peter Liechti Award – an award that aims to promote a daring, bold and independent cinematic attitude – goes to The Plains by David Easteal, a film that encourages a different relationship between the screen and the spectator and finds an interesting, subtle but strong way to combine the personal and the political.
It’s actually a film that challenges its own genre: it’s a road movie, but rushing to arrive nowhere particularly – instead it’s asking everyone to stop and breath, recall and remember.

Cinema South Festival / Special Mention, Debut Film Competition

Jury Statement (Guillaume Mainguet, Ilan Duran Cohen & Israela Shaer Meoded):
Between the documentary and the fiction, between the casual and the routine, while the viewer acts as part of the mise-en-scene, the director turns the gray and the everyday into a cinematic spectacle. Under the disguise of a car driving on the roads with eternal repetition, the particles that make up the experience of our lives slowly unfold. We were moved by the director’s belief in the medium of cinema and his ability to breathe life into human existence.

Belfort International Film Festival Entrevues / Films en Cours post-production support prize

Jury Statement (Katell Quillévéré, Frédéric Busnel-Joncour, David Chaulier, Matthieu Deniau, Pierre Huot, Nicolas Naegelen & Morgan Pokée):
We have decided to give this award to a film which has caught us unawares, and has left a significant mark on us long after the screening. Seeing this first feature film we had this rare and special feeling of witnessing the birth of a great filmmaker who, by his confident choices and the strength of his eye, has transformed a 3 hour travel in the inside of a car into an amazing cinematographic experience and a dizzying meditation on the passage of time, all the while questioning our place as spectator today.