What makes cinema dangerous? Inside the Festival of Dangerous Ideas’ new film program

From Salò to Shortbus, FODI’s new program explores how film can challenge our ideas about sex, violence, power and morality.
Linday Beamish as Severin in Shortbus (2006). Image: ThinkFilm.

What makes a film dangerous? Is it the subject matter, its depictions of violence and intimacy, the ideas it puts into the world, or the possibility that those ideas might change the way we see it?

The program includes the surreal delirium of Leos Carax’s Holy Motors (2012), Ishirō Honda’s original Gojira (Godzilla) (1954), Jane Campion’s The Piano, Pier Paolo Pasolini’s notorious Salò (120 Days of Sodom) (1976), Kathryn Bigelow’s Zero Dark Thirty (2012), and John Cameron Mitchell’s sexually explicit Shortbus (2006), alongside documentaries including Mitzi Goldman’s Hatred (1995) and Pat Fiske’s Rocking the Foundations (1985).

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Alannah Sue (she/her) is a journalist, writer and theatre critic with a passion for arts and culture and all that glitters. She joined the Creative Hubs Group team as Senior Arts & Screen Journalist after relocating to Melbourne in 2025. She previously served as Arts & Culture Editor at Time Out Sydney and contributes to various publications. She is always keen to take a chance on weird performance art, theatre of all kinds, out-of-the-box exhibitions, queer venues, and cheap Prosecco. Give her half a chance, and she will get on a soapbox when it comes to topics like the magic of musical theatre, the importance of rigorous arts criticism, and the global cultural implications of the RuPaul’s Drag Race franchise. Got a pitch for Alannah? Send an email to: [email protected]