The Sydney film festival is almost upon us! It’s time to play the music, it’s time to light the lights, it’s time to meet the – no, wait, wrong event. No music, no lights and, please, no talking: this is the hallowed space of the cinema. And an awful lot of it this year, with a program that features 248 films from 81 countries.

Here are nine films (and one event) to add to your diary.

The Death of Robin Hood

Director: Michael Sarnoski (US)

Hugh Jackman cannot be trusted in any film where a beloved character dies; those who watched Logan, only to see Wolverine reappear in subsequent movies, will know why. Then again, some figures – like old mate Robin of Locksley – can never be killed off; they’re reinvented for every generation. Michael Sarnoski, the director of the terrific Nicolas Cage vehicle Pig, helms A24’s dark take on the Robin Hood story, starring Jackman as you-know-who. It’s being advertised with provocatively revisionist taglines, including “The legend was a lie” and “He was no hero”.

The Arab

Director: Malek Bensmaïl (Algeria/France)

Albert Camus’ legendary novel The Stranger will never leave the zeitgeist but it’s certainly having a moment, with a superb new adaptation now in cinemas and an intriguing reworking of the material coming in The Arab. Algerian film-maker Malek Bensma adapts the 2013 novel The Meursault Investigation, described by the Guardian’s Nick Fraser as a “wonderfully embittered, beautiful book” that reclaims Camus’ story, granting the famously unnamed Arab victim in The Stranger a voice and identity.

Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma

Director: Jane Schoenbrun (US)

Not that I’d be sold by a title alone, but, well … what a title! More importantly, this is the new film from Jane Schoenbrun, whose previous feature, I Saw the TV Glow, is a strange and beguiling blend of horror and fantasy, still slithering through my psyche. Described as a “camp, bloody psychosexual horror”, Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma follows a film-maker hired to resurrect an 80s slasher franchise who tracks down the reclusive star of the original and (quoting the official synopsis) is drawn into a “blood-soaked world of desire, fear and delirium”. The film co-stars Hannah Einbinder of Hacks and Gillian Anderson.

Leviticus

Director: Adrian Chiarella (Australia)

The debut feature from Australia’s Adrian Chiarella has been generating plenty of slack-jawed reactions since premiering at this year’s Sundance. It follows two teenage boys (Joe Bird and Stacy Clausen) in a conservative Christian community who are forced to undertake gay conversion practices – a process that unleashes a sinister force that begins stalking them, taking the form of the person embodying their deepest desires. This intense premise speaks to the horror genre’s malleability and capacity to tell important, socially conscious narratives.

Saccharine

Director: Natalie Erika James (Australia)

This list has touched on some heavy-sounding titles, so, to lighten the mood: here’s a body horror movie about toxic beauty standards and self-destruction! Melbourne med student Hana (Francis) becomes addicted to a weight loss drug, which is tough enough to deal with, without having to grapple with a ghost who haunts her and grows bigger as her body gets smaller. This film comes from Natalie Erika James, who directed the excellent Australian horror Relic.

In Conversation with Peter Weir

Peter Weir – who is one of the greatest Australian film-makers of all time – has never been one to court media attention or grant many interviews. The director of Picnic at Hanging Rock, Gallipoli, Dead Poets Society and The Truman Show, among many others, will make a rare public appearance to deliver the Ian McPherson lecture, which is taking the form of a “fireside” conversation with Rob Carlton. The price is pretty damn good, too: free!

The Kidnapping of Arabella

Director: Carolina Cavalli (Italy)

In this Italian road movie, Benedetta Porcarol plays Holly, an unhappy 28-year-old who, after encountering a seven-year-old girl (Lucrezia Guglielmino) named Arabella in a car park, becomes convinced of something rather unusual: that this girl is a version of her younger self. Wanting to punish her father (Chris Pine, speaking Italian) Arabella takes advantage, and the pair embark on a cross-country adventure.

The Invite

Director: Olivia Wilde (US)

Remaking the 2020 Spanish comedy The People Upstairs, the new film from the Booksmart director, Olivia Wilde, is another buzzy title: a single-setting, star-driven, reportedly hilarious film about a dinner party gone wrong between two couples living in the same apartment building. Wilde stars alongside Seth Rogen, Penélope Cruz and Edward Norton in a film that the Variety critic Owen Gleiberman says is “so original, so brimming with surprise” that “you watch it in a state of rapt immersion and delight”.

Ripples in the Mist

Director: Clara Law (Australia)

Clara Law has made some fine, under-appreciated films, including The Goddess of 1967 (starring Rose Byrne as a blind woman) and Floating Life. Her latest follows two exiled Hong Kong women whose stories intertwine in reportedly quiet, unexpected ways, “tracing grief, friendship and creative renewal across Taiwan and Australia”.

Árru

Director: Elle Sofe Sara (Norway/Sweden/Finland)

I like to include on these lists at least one international title that just screams “film festival!” Productions about Polish potato farmers, for instance, or Estonian beekeepers, or – in the case in Árru – a drama about a reindeer herder in Sápmi (a region spreads across Norway, Sweden, Finland and Russia) fighting to protect her ancestral lands from a mining project. The festival program describes it as “a fierce and cathartic tale about breaking one’s silence to do the right thing”.

• Sydney film festival runs from 3 to 14 June. Find the full program here