The Sydney (Patronising) Film Festival has introduced ‘the world’s largest cash prize for Indigenous filmmaking’ at $35,000. My heart sank at the news.

The prize reveals the Sydney Film Festival’s total misunderstanding of what awards of excellence mean.

Any film, including short films, featured within the Festival’s First Nations program, automatically qualifies for consideration for the award.

Putting aside the pathetic scramble for status by referring to the warring tribes that lived on this continent before settlement as ‘Nations’, my heart sank because the Festival board has unintentionally disparaged those very ‘First Nations’ filmmakers by relegating them to a second class of award winners.

Creating this award does not ‘recognise’ those filmmakers who might be eligible, it shunts them into a separate category where they will compete for $35,000 against each other.

The ‘main game’ is the Official Competition, where the Sydney Film Prize is worth $60,000.

This sort of patronising behaviour annoys and saddens me. It is no doubt well-intentioned, but it’s a thoughtless unkindness that is hidden by the cheers of the Woke.

The Audience Award at the same Festival that was sponsored by the award-winning online movie magazine, Urban Cinefile, which I published (1997-2017), was an award that any film chosen for the festival could win. Imagine how offensive it would have been to have a separate category for Indigenous filmmakers… This sort of racial eligibility doesn’t lift up ‘First Nations’ filmmakers, it kicks them out of the Premier League.