At this year’s Sydney Film Festival (SFF), one of the most talked-about titles isn’t a big-budget release or the work of a household-name director. French Girls (despite its name) is a distinctly local production, shot on the streets of Sydney with a homegrown cast and directed by Sydney filmmaker Hyun Lee.
For Lee, the past two weeks have been a whirlwind. Since SFF previewed its 2026 program on April 15, and announced French Girls as part of the lineup, the experience has been, in her words, “crazy.”
While the full SFF lineup won’t be revealed until May 6, the early preview has already generated plenty of buzz, particularly around the festival’s first-ever fashion-focused strand, Sartorial: Fashion on Film, curated by Senior Programmer Jessica Moraza.
The program features work from heavyweight directors, including Sofia Coppola and Robert Altman, but it’s French Girls, Lee’s debut feature, that’s emerging as the unexpected standout.
French Girls follows Mia (played by Mia Kidis), a Sydney construction worker whose life shifts unexpectedly when she’s scouted by a modelling agent. The film traces her entry into the fashion world, capturing her observations of the industry, her complicated relationship with her boyfriend, her encounters with other models, and a sudden brush with the law.
With its opening night screening already sold out, and tickets quickly disappearing for the second, we watched French Girls ahead of its premiere and spoke with Lee about bringing the project to life, the role of the Sydney Film Festival, and why Sydney’s creative scene deserves far more recognition than it gets.
Lee’s return to the Sydney Film Festival
Although the past two weeks have been especially exciting for Lee, this isn’t her first time in the Sydney Film Festival lineup. Her short film Asian Girls (which is available to watch online) was a finalist for the Dendy Awards for Australian Short Films in 2018, marking an early milestone in her career.
“That short film was made when I was a real baby filmmaker, and I hadn’t ever worked with actors before, which is why there’s no dialogue in it,” she tells us. “It’s so different to the feature!”
“French Girls was my first real, big, proper long-form piece of work … with that short film [Asian Girls] I see it more as this sort of music video, or mood piece.”
The festival itself holds a special place in Lee’s life. She’s been attending since high school, first as a filmgoer and now as a filmmaker, making this return feel particularly full circle. For Lee, the festival is also a reflection of Sydney’s creative identity, something she believes is often underestimated.
“I have a deep love for Sydney, and I feel like sometimes in creative communities, people can really grumble about how Australia is culturally behind, and that really annoys me because I mean, even in a historical lens, Australia has the oldest living culture in the world … Australia is not a young country.”
“I think the cultural communities that live in Sydney are doing great stuff, and I get really bored of the narratives where people say there’s nothing going on here.”
French Girls pushes back against those familiar “grumbles.” Anchored by a cast of emerging local talent, the film positions Sydney as more than just a backdrop; it becomes a defining presence, from the King’s Cross Coca-Cola sign to Central Station, right down to a fleeting shot of a humble sausage roll with ketchup packets.
Through its lens, the city is reimagined as creative, unique and culturally rich, spotlighting not only Lee’s voice, but the broader talent of Sydney’s filmmakers, actors and creative community.
Fashion, film and influences
Lee grew up in the suburb of Eastwood and began her career working as a photographer before transitioning “quite gradually into doing more film work.” She made her first short film in 2014, an early iteration of what would eventually become French Girls.
It’s her time spent as a photographer in the fashion world that inspired a lot of the scenes we see in French Girls. Rather than leaning into the stereotypical portrayals of the world of fashion, Lee drew on her own firsthand experience to depict the industry.
“I get annoyed when I see films or TV shows about the fashion world … like that’s not what actually happens on set. But also, the story is inspired by so many different films and people in my real life.”
But French Girls isn’t just about the industry itself. At its core, it’s a study of human behaviour, particularly how beauty shapes the way people are perceived and treated.
“A big influence was one of my very close friends … she was also incredibly beautiful and also incredibly intelligent, and it was really interesting to observe how, almost from an anthropological or sociological perspective, the way people treat others depending on how beautiful or average they are in appearance.”
Rather than offering a straightforward critique of the fashion world, Lee was more interested in something more universal.
“I didn’t want to make a film about how f**ked up the fashion industry is, I think that’s too easy and cliché. I think it’s really interesting to look at how, from a human perspective, appearances and beauty affect the way we relate to each other.”
The making of French Girls
When describing the making of French Girls, Lee stated that a lot of it was down to “letting the universe take the wheel”. That’s not to underscore anyone’s hard work, she assures us, but she does say that everything was “extremely fateful”.
There were no formal auditions, and the film itself wasn’t even meant to be a feature at first. The turning point came during a fashion shoot, where Lee met her lead actor by chance.
“By a string of unlikely events, I somehow got myself into the shoot of an editorial for RUSSH Magazine… that day Mia was a model, and after I’d shot that footage, I was just like, oh my gosh this girl…
“I felt like I could shoot some more stuff and maybe we could make it into a short film or something… and then one thing led to another, and we’d shot the whole feature.”
After Lee found Mia, the rest of the cast came together organically.
“I already had the script, but I did end up changing a lot of it to mould it to the cast that we ended up with. For example, we cast Mia’s real boyfriend at the time to play the boyfriend… then his friends came on board, and then I met other models while I was shooting stuff with Mia”.
The film took about four years to come together, costing $28,000 to make. They started shooting in 2022, with proper filming with a full cast and crew commencing in 2023.
“We shot on the weekend because it was a micro-budget film, and so we worked around all our crew’s schedules. It really was like a labour of love… whenever we had free time, that’s what we spent our free time doing.”
Why “French Girls”?
Given French Girls is set entirely in Sydney (and features no French characters), the title might come as a surprise.
Lee admits there’s no simple answer. “The film is called French Girls for so, so many reasons, and if I went into them all, this would take forever.”
Still, she offers a glimpse into the thinking behind it, one that ties directly to Sydney, and to Australia more broadly.
“One of the very Sydney things about it, and this ties back to why it’s called French Girls, is the thing is like, we’re so far away from France in many ways.
But something I’ve really felt in the fashion world in Sydney… is the way that we glorify French culture and look at European standards as the cultural benchmark… this is going back to what I was saying about Sydney and Australia being reduced to sort of culturally behind Europe.”
“There is something very Australian about the way that we elevate a European standard for culture, but what’s going on here truly is interesting and important in its own right, but there is a very Australian tendency to overlook it.”
Lee’s advice for SFF 2026 attendees
If there’s anyone worth taking tips from at the Sydney Film Festival, it’s Lee. “I go every year. I get a flexipass and watch like 20 films in one week,” she says.
For first-time attendees, her advice is to skip the obvious and seek out the unexpected.
“My advice for people going to the festival for the first time is to try and watch movies that would not get a wider release otherwise… There’s always a selection of lesser-known films by lesser-known filmmakers, and those tend to be the really special ones. They tend to be the riskier stories… But those are the ones that I think are the real gems… The whole purpose of a film festival is to give those films a platform.”
In her view, sticking to mainstream picks misses the point entirely. “I think it would be a waste to go to the film festival and watch some mainstream movie.”
Instead, she recommends using the festival as a way to discover emerging voices, particularly through the Dendy Shorts program. “I always see the Dendy Shorts Awards every single year, which is a good way to get a quick rundown on who’s making what and what young and upcoming filmmakers are doing.”
If you’re unsure where to go, Lee suggests booking a screening at the State Theatre.
“My favourite cinema is the State Theatre… every year at the film festival, I spend a lot of time in there watching movies… it makes the cinema-going experience feel really big and beautiful.”
French Girls screens at the Art Gallery of New South Wales on June 10 and at Event Cinemas George Street on June 12. Tickets for the second screening are still available to purchase here.
