To celebrate his birthday, Frank (Bryan Brown) and his wife Charlotte (Greta Scacchi) decide to throw a three-day party at their luxurious house in Sydney’s Palm Beach. They invite their closest and oldest friends, including Frank’s former bandmates, Leo (Sam Neill) and Billy (Richard E. Grant), their spouses and children. It doesn’t take long, however, for tensions to mount and long-buried secrets to come to light.

Ten years after she made her directorial debut with Beautiful Kate, actor-turned-director Rachel Ward delivers a witty, uplifting comedy-drama for her sophomore film. Even if the material occasionally veers towards the soap operatic, the terrific cast of veteran actors, breathtaking scenery and a couple of unexpected twists make Palm Beach worth a visit.

Born in the Soviet Union in 1938 to a Tatar Muslim family, Rudolf Nureyev (Oleg Ivenko) went on to become the most acclaimed male ballet dancer of his generation. This film tells the story of his rise in the ballet world and his attempt to seek political asylum in 1961 while on tour in Paris, against the KGB’s desperate attempts to stop him from becoming the first Soviet artist to defect to the West.

As directed by Ralph Fiennes – who also plays Nureyev’s ballet master and mentor Alexander Pushkin – The White Crow is a hypnotic, beautifully made biographical drama.