Adelaide Film Festival Announces 2026 Program

This is what All For Film looks like in 2026.

27 Australian Premieres. 10 World Premieres. 122 films from 52 countries.

AFF has launched its full program for the 2026 Festival, with screenings taking place from October 14 – October 25 at cinemas across Adelaide. 

Direct from Venice, the Opening Night Gala film is the highly anticipated Wild Horse Nine from Academy Award-winning writer and director Martin McDonagh. Wickedly funny and thoroughly unpredictable, Wild Horse Nine is led by an extraordinary cast including John Malkovich, Sam Rockwell, Steve Buscemi, Parker Posey and Tom Waits. Set on Easter Island in the lead-up to the 1973 Chilean coup, this is event cinema at its finest. Wild Horse Nine will be followed by the outrageously sexy Queer Palm and Camera d’Or for best first feature-nominated Jim Queen for the Saturday Night Party.

The award winners don’t stop there, also featured is Cannes Best Actor Award-winning Coward (Director Lukas Dhont), Cannes Best Director Award-winning Fatherland (Director Paweł Pawlikowski), Sundance Best Director Award-winning Ha-Chan, Shake Your Booty! (Director Josef Kubota Wladyka), Sundance Grand Jury Prize winner Josephine (Director Beth De Araújo); the Sydney Film Prize winner Minotaur by the great Russian director Andrey Zvyagintsev; and Berlin's Silver Bear Award winner for Best Leading Performance, Rose (Director Marcus Schleinzer), starring the incomparable Sandra Hüller, who also stars in Fatherland alongside Hans Zischler.

AFF will close out with a World Premiere and AFFIF exclusive screening of Hell Has No Fire Escape for its Closing Night Gala.

 SPECIAL PRESENTATIONS

The Fox, directed by Dario Russo, had its world premiere at AFF 2025 and will return to AFF 2026 for an encore screening. Led by Emily Browning and Jai Courtney, this all-star cast is rounded out with the voices of Olivia Coleman and Sam Neill. Directed by Australian filmmaker Eleanor Wilson and her partner Alex Huston Fischer, Wicker sees Olivia Colman take centre stage alongside Alexander Skarsgård. From acclaimed Adelaide director Anthony Maras, Pressure is the highly anticipated follow up to Hotel Mumbai (AFF 2018). Paper Tiger, from director James Gray, brings together a stellar cast of Adam Driver, Scarlett Johansson and Miles Teller. Celebrating its 30th anniversary, Scott Hicks’ Academy Award-winning Shine has been restored in 4k and will screen alongside a piano recital from Simon Tedeschi AM. AFF is also hosting the launch of Scott Hicks’ book Shine: Persistence of Version about the 10-year journey to make the film.

 AFF COMPETITION

Established in 2007, the AFF Competition was the first of its kind in Australia with prize winners to be determined by a prestigious Jury. The jury has a broad range of expertise in relation to screen from criticism, writing, exhibition to production and is composed of Cameron Bailey, Tilda Cobam-Hervey, Xavier Samuel, Sandeep Ray and Anna Vincent for the 2026 season. The AFF Fiction Competition champions visionary filmmakers and their distinct stories about the longings of the human heart in difficult worlds with contested realities. A princess chases love across time, but can she outrun patriarchy? A young boy shakes away the summery haze of his cossetted family life only to find the ugliness of apartheid. And the desire for fulfillment which ekes out its own paths across the bulwark of class, caste, homophobia and emotional devastation.

This year’s Feature Fiction Competition titles are Chile’s Donkey Princess directed by Joaquín Cociña and Cristóbal León in which a princess escapes her storybook world; Karlovy Vary Grand Prix Crystal Globe winning debut feature film Fruit Gathering from writer-director Aung Phyoe about a forbidden love that blooms on the unforgiving production line of a textile factory; Directed by Anuparna Roy, Lovers in the Blue Night takes place in chaotic Mumbai as people dare to desire in a world that punishes emotions; The Smell of Apples, directed by John Trengrove, takes us to apartheid era South Africa where we follow an 11-year old boy who awakens to the violence and inequality around him leaving his idyllic childhood behind; and from Australian director Dominic Allen, Tiber, which poses the question ‘who are we when our world falls apart?’ to its art historian lead Marco (Played by Marcus J. Cotterell).

Selected by the AFF programming panel, five films have been chosen for the Feature Documentary Competition. Dublin-based visual artist, academic and filmmaker Dragana Jurišić brings The Balkan Cowboy for its Australian premiere. Dragana is an exile from an Atlantis-like country that no longer exists. Her family fled the war crimes following the catastrophic collapse of Yugoslavia. The troubling rise of anti-immigrant sentiments in Ireland leads Dragana to return ‘home’ to rediscover the creative soul, Hari Džekson, who inspired her love of Westerns. Directed by Quinn Whitney Wilson and Viridiana Lieberman, Jean-Michel Basquiat sets the record straight on titular artist and New York icon Jean-Michel Basquiat. In Tehran, Under the Skin, director Afsaneh Salari examines the double-edged scalpel that is Tehranian women’s rejection of the hijab as an oppressive regime, but embrace of nose jobs, tummy tucks and facelifts in the pursuit of the perfect body. Set against the codes of beauty, class and behaviour within Mexico’s conservative upper-middle-class society, The Way You See Me is a self portrait of transition from hyper femininity to defiant masculinity (Director M Untitled). Directed by Christian Cargill, Wolf sees British avant-pop musician Patrick Wolf open his archive in an earnest reflection on life and art, framed by a searching conversation with longtime friend Tilda Swinton.

The $5,000 Change Award was established in 2020 for positive or environmental impact and cinema expressing new directions for humanity. With the odds against them, humans across the globe express the urgency for change. The 2026 Change Award Jury is Professor Ariella Helfgott, Professor of Foresight at Adelaide University and Co-Director of SA Futures Agency; Dr Jared Thomas, a curator, archivist, researcher, filmmaker and award-winning writer of children’s and young adult fiction; and Emma Webb OAM, an organiser, curator and activist. The selected films for the Change Award are: All Rivers Spill Their Stories to the Sea (Director Jeanie Finlay), a documentary about accountability and community when thousands of poisoned crabs wash ashore on England’s north-east coast. G. Anthony Svatek’s essay film Humboldt USA delves into 19th century German environmentalist Alexander von Humboldt’s musings on our interconnected world. Directed by Sara Dosa, Time and Water folds fascinating family history into a reflection on a local and global catastrophe as glaciers in Iceland continue to melt away. Steal This Story, Please!, directed by award-winning filmmakers Tia Lessin and Cael Deal, follows Democracy Now! Newshound Amy Goodman as she rallies for us to join the fight for truly independent news. In SXSW gem The Way We Move, co-directors Vanessa Joo Dumont and Nicholas Davenel spotlight ASL (American Sign Language) performer and trainer extraordinaire Amber Galloway and explore what lies between notes and lyrics.

AFF INVESTMENT FUND

Adelaide Film Festival’s Investment Fund (AFFIF) has provided support to over 150 South Australian film projects, enabling Adelaide filmmakers to get their films made. Pitch to premiere is the support approach that AFF takes with involvement beginning at the inception of a filmmaker’s first idea through development and production, to the night a film finally screens. Setting up South Australian films to earn international accolades and success is the name of the game - All for filmmakers means being there for it all.

This year’s Closing Night Gala presentation is the AFFIF film Hell Has No Fire Escape directed by Georgina Savage and Matthew Bate. This film is the story of Pastor Ina Dry, a 63-year-old widow who inherited her late husband’s rehabilitation center. Yearning for a new life and the possibility of love, Ina finds herself drifting from God and towards TikTok, fantasy television, and an online romance. Can Ina save the failing rehab while pursuing her desires? Does Georgina Savage’s presence, help or hinder Ina on her journey?

Other AFFIF films premiering at AFF 2026 include the previously announced Agata the Writer, starring Mia Wasikowska, which previously premiered at Venice (Director Kuba Dorabialski); KUMARANGK: Sacred Women’s Business (Director Tracey Rigney); The Forbidden Aunt, directed by and starring internationally acclaimed Australian actress Bojana Novakovic; Aftermath, a psychological portrait of lives intertwined by trauma and obsession (Directors Jared Nicholson, Ben Lawrence); and Lucrum, a folk horror about a renowned pianist and a young adoptee set in an isolated estate. Lucrum is the third Film Lab New Voices production, an initiative of AFF, South Australian Film Corporation and Screen Australia - following Monolith (AFF 2022)and Lesbian Space Princess (AFF 2024).

It has also been announced that Tilda Cobham-Hervey’s AFFIF supported feature directorial debut, It’s All Going Very Well…,will have its Australian premiere as an AFF special co-presentation with the Adelaide Festival in March 2027.

Rounding out the AFFIF titles for 2026 are two short films: Delia, directed by Madeleine Parry, about an emotionally suppressed office worker caught in a supermarket holdup, featuring Missy Higgins singing Troye Sivan’s One of Your Girls, and The Night Moses Died directed by Lilah Bennetti, which will also screen as the first AFFIF and Pride Foundation Australia co-commission. Nineteen-year-old Moses escapes into the night and forms an unlikely kinship with retired showgirl Carmel.

AUSTRALIAN INDEPENDENTS

AFF 2026 will also screen number of Australian independent films including Boss Cat, directed by Genevieve Clay-Smith, about Sonja, a 20-something year old with Down syndrome who expresses herself through krump dancing; River, a coming-of-age story about a 16-year old girl cast adrift after the shock death of her mother directed by Zane Borg: The Piano Turner, a documentary about piano doctor Martin Tucker directed by Natalia Laska and produced by Australian filmmakers Julia Overton and Tom Zubrycki; Sweet Milk Lane about Jake, a trans man who is mistaken for his twin brother by their estranged dad directed by Harvey Zielinski; and Wilderness, directed by Martin McKenna about an offbeat road trip which reunites two old friends.

WORLD CINEMA

The World Cinema program is a collection of stellar filmmakers and actors including Pedro Almodóvar’s Palme d’Or nominated feature film Bitter Christmas; Drive My Car director Ryūsuke Hamaguchi’s All of a Sudden; the Cannes Best Screenplay winner, A Man of His Time (Director Emmanuel Marre); Sundance Special Jury Award winner Bedford Park (Director Stephanie Ahn); Rami Malek and Tom Sturridge in Ira Sach’s The Man I Love; and Winner of the Un Certain Regard Prize at Cannes, Sandra Wollner’s Everytime. Other stand outs include, I See Buildings Fall Like Lightning (Director Clio Barnard); Cannes Queer Palm Revelation winner Flesh and Fuel (Director Pierre Le Gall) and direct from its world premiere at Toronto International Film Festival, Djinn Wedding (Director Ferit Karahan).

WORLD DOCUMENTARY

The fiery and colourful World Documentary section takes you from the sleepy villages of Cinque Terre in The Siege of Paradise (Director Gar O’Rourke) to the dinner tables of dictators in How to Feed a Dictator (Director Andrew Neel). Bring your tissues for The Cycle of Love (Director Orlanda von Einsiedel), an unbelievable true story about a street artist’s journey across continents for love. Manhood (Director Daniel Lambroso) enters Bill Moore’s world of penis enlargement and the customers buying in. Documentarian Mahsa Karampour documents her journey to New York where she reconnects with her exiled punk-rock brother in Into the Jaws of the Ogre. Phenomena sees physics teacher and debut filmmaker Josef Gatti blur the lines between science and art. Observational documentary Tin Castle chronicles the lives of an Irish Traveller family across six years. Winner of the World Cinema Documentary Grand Jury Prize at Sundance, To Hold a Mountain (Directors Biljana Tutorov and Peter Glomazić) where mother and daughter confront militarisation and displacement. Dark Emu author Bruce Pascoe is at the centre of Yumburra (Director Grace McKenzie) where he runs Indigenous company Black Duck Foods. Previously announced Yo (Love is a Rebellious Bird) (Directors Anna Fitch and Banker White) about Yo and Anna, two unlikely friends.

MUSIC ON FILM

Back again, and with the Beastie Boys this time, the Music on Film selection returns with The Best Summer (Director Tamra Davis) taking us backstage at Australia’s Summersault tour in an immersive blast from the Hi8 past. Winner of the Silver Bear for Best Director at Berlin, Everybody Digs Bill Evans (Director Grant Gee) is an intimate black and white riff on the disappearance of legendary jazz musician Bill Evans after the death of his collaborator. Switching up the beat, Ken Kwapis’ We Are The Shaggs is about the band that defies all description, The Shaggs. It’s all in the name with Aly Muritiba’s Funk which revolves around Rio’s bass-heavy kinky funk movement.

LATE NIGHT

The Late Night program also returns to AFF in 2026 with four feature films. Rich tourists time travel to the idyllic past in Jenna Cato Bass’ thought provoking thriller Future Tense, asking if one couple can change the future. Domestic life meets surreal sci-fi in body horror-comedy Mum, I’m Alien Pregnant (Director Thunderlips - Sean Wallace and Jordan Mark Windsor). Inspired by an enduring South Australian ghost story, home grown Ruby, Ruby (Director Ursula Dabrowsky) explores what happens when two friends awaken a deadly legend. Zachary Wigon gives gothic menace a wacky makeover in his horror Victorian Psycho.

Interested in filmmaking? You won’t want to miss Memory of Princess Mumbi and Robert Richardson, The White Devil. Directed by Damien Hauser, Memory of Princess Mumbi is a part mockumentary, part sci-fi fantasy film that asks the ever-growing question ‘does democratising filmmaking outweigh AI’s ethical cost?’. In the midst of profiling Oscar-winning cinematographer Robert Richardson, Czech filmmaker Jana Hojdová gets more than she bargained for in her documentary Robert Richardson: The White Devil. Robert Richardson will be present for an extended Q&A with director Scott Hicks as part of the Screen Conversations program for this year.

In collaboration with Yitpi Yartapuultiku - AFF will be presenting the World Premiere of Bukal Bukal directed by the late, great Rhonda Roberts AO with Pauline Clague. Come and join special guests Pauline and the focus of the film, Yindji woman and activist Henrietta Marrie AM, for an unforgettable and very special evening around the campfire. Henrietta Marrie’s work has been crucial in transforming Indigenous rights and how the governments, corporations and international institutions connect with Indigenous people’s land and culture. Picnic rugs are encouraged! There will be food trucks on site and male/female fires. This film is one of many that are part of AFF’s (Port) Adelaide Film Festival which also features a collection of screenings at the Odeon Star Cinema.

In partnership with Moviejuice, an Adelaide-based film collective dedicated to screening, distribution and celebration of experimental cinema, AFF will be screening Scum ‘87 and Chronovisor. Historical conspiracy and paranoia set amongst endless depths of the archive will have you falling down the rabbit hole.

A comprehensive collection of short film programs, World Shorts, Australian Shorts, Animation Shorts, Queer Shorts and Made in SA will be presented along with a selection of shorts screening prior to some of the main features.

It is an honour every year for AFF to provide the Bettison & James Award on behalf of Jim Bettison and Helen James Foundation. This award provides $50,000 in recognition of an individual with a dedicated and inspiring lifelong involvement working in any field. 2026’s recipient is Karina Lester, a Yankunytjatjara Anangu woman from the Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara Lands (APY Lands) in the far northwest of South Australia. Karina is Aboriginal Co-Manager and Senior Aboriginal Language Expert for the Mobile Language Team (MLT) at Adelaide University, supporting the revival of Aboriginal languages of South Australia and living languages programs. She is passionate to maintain her language for future generations, a passion that began when her father’s people taught her to speak it.

As an active anti-nuclear activist, Karina continues to share not only her late father Yami Lester’s story, but her grandmother’s story of the first mainland nuclear bomb tests at Emu Field. Hear her speak more in conversation with Gem Romuld after a screening of Britain’s Nuclear Bomb Scandal: Our Story (2024)

"This year Adelaide Film Festival brings together highly anticipated international cinema alongside a stellar array of Australian films, in a program that celebrates master filmmakers and bold new voices. Support our courageous filmmakers who take our stories to the world, come party at a gala, see the filmmakers on the pink carpet or just come be part of one of our many free events - AFF is All For Film and invite everyone to join in." - Mat Kesting, AFF CEO & Creative Director

"Since its inception in 2003, the Adelaide Film Festival has become one of Australia's most respected screen events, with an international reach. In 2022, the Labor Government made the Adelaide Film Festival an annual event, allowing our screen sector the opportunity to shine on the international stage. I'm looking forward to another successful Adelaide Film Festival in October and l congratulate the Adelaide Film Festival team on their incredible work." - Deputy Premier and Minister for Arts, Kyam Maher

Explore the films, choose your sessions and build your AFF 2026. Adelaide Film Festival returns from 14–25 October 2026.