The third and final AFF/Samstag Expand Moving Image Commission is a collaborative moving image installation by Naina Sen (NT), Naveed Farro (Vic) and Harrison Hall (Vic) reimagining the cultural connections between West and South Asia.

Against the backdrop of the 1970s Chilean military coup, two CIA operatives navigate loyalty, conspiracy and the consequences of foreign intervention.

The third and final AFF/Samstag Expand Moving Image Commission is a collaborative moving image installation by Naina Sen (NT), Naveed Farro (Vic) and Harrison Hall (Vic) reimagining the cultural connections between West and South Asia.

Sweeping mountain winds and distant military explosions shape daily life for Gara and teenage Nada in the potent and transportive To Hold a Mountain. Living beside a NATO military training ground in Montenegro’s mountains, the pair face the threat of displacement as another danger looms: Nada’s father is soon to be released from prison.

After a sudden loss, middle-age ballroom dancer Haru (Rinko Kikuchi) goes back to the dance studio to get her groove back, only to find a new sexy instructor who inspires more than just slides across the dance floor. Winner of Best direction at Sundance.

At his Dallas clinic, Bill Moore has built a growing business offering men penis enlargement procedures. Funny, graphic and unexpectedly matter of fact, Manhood follows Moore and his clients into a world where ordinary male insecurity is measured in inches and increasingly treated as something money can fix.

You’ll come to mourn the loss of a glacier every bit as much as a family member when you melt into Sara Dosa’s astonishing new film. As narrated by the Icelandic poet Andri Snær Magnason, who pours his family’s soul into it, it’s a spellbinding elegy for a fast-vanishing majesty.

Princess Diana inhabits a Technicolor storybook world of gauchos, puppets and painted sets, until a magical bracelet offers escape. As fantasy fractures and new realities emerge, this shape-shifting Chilean tale asks whether freedom can ever release us from the bonds of love and obligation.

Documentary directors Dragana Jurisic (The Balkan Cowboy), Jared Nicholson (Aftermath) and Bojana Novakovic (The Forbidden Aunt) discuss working with material where the subject crosses over into the personal.

Moderator: Alice Bergin (Screen Australia)

Mahsa Karampour left Iran for France. Her brother, Siavash, stayed and became an underground punk-rocker, later exiled to New York. Years on, Mahsa travels to reconnect – through backgammon, road trips and a very personal voiceover in Persian – in a film as much about her as him.

In New Jersey, a car accident brings Audrey and Eli together, two Korean Americans carrying different histories of family and emotional damage. Stephanie Ahn’s Sundance prize-winning debut follows the tentative, difficult-to-define connection that grows between them.

Burn bright enough and you’ll be remembered forever, no matter how tragically short your life is cut. Such was the fate of game-changing artist Jean-Michel Basquiat – friend of Madonna, Grace Jones, Debbie Harry, Keith Haring and Andy Warhol – who blazed an indelible trail before joining the infamous 27 Club. But when legend envelops your legacy, with Basquiat’s brilliantly bold works going for as much as US$110 million, the truth can get lost. Viridiana Lieberman and Quinn Whitney Wilson’s iridescent documentary sets the record straight.

A celebration of the best in World Cinema short filmmaking

Agata (Mia Wasikowska) a disillusioned writer, arrives in Sarajevo to write a novel set during the Bosnian war. As she speaks with survivors, her project begins to unravel. In the house where she’s staying, obscene art objects begin to vanish, and the line between lived experience and fiction starts to dissolve.

Inspired by his physicist father, Josef Gatti transforms scientific experiments into a sensory work of art. Captured entirely in camera without visual effects or digital manipulation, Phenomena reveals hidden worlds beyond ordinary perception. 

Who needs romance when you’re an independent fisherwoman with no time for smelling nice? Such is the lot of Olivia Colman in Eleanor Wilson and Alex Huston Fischer’s fantastic feature. Everything changes when magical craftwork pairs her with Alexander Skarsgård’s hunky basket case in this satirical comedy about sex and marriage.

The Fox had its world premiere at AFF 2025 and we are delighted to present this encore screening in the lead up to its cinema release. A darkly comic folktale of an ordinary bloke and the fox who offers to solve all his problems.

For the first time, the must-listen to weekly podcast for the Australian screen industry will be at AFF. Screen Australia’s Louise Gough and other festival guests will be asked their one big idea to change the screen industry.

Host: Kirsty Stark and Robbie Miles

The third and final AFF/Samstag Expand Moving Image Commission is a collaborative moving image installation by Naina Sen (NT), Naveed Farro (Vic) and Harrison Hall (Vic) reimagining the cultural connections between West and South Asia.

Set in World War 2 France during the early months of the German Occupation, Emmanuel Marre’s Cannes-winning screenplay grapples with the personal and the political at a moment of profound national upheaval. Anchored by Swann Arlaud’s gripping central performance, A Man of His Time is a sly, unsettling meditation on power and opportunism.

A deaf person can feel music’s beat through their feet. Powerhouse Amber Galloway reckons the community deserves more. Join her bootcamp for ASL translators, teaching them to reveal the heart of a song beating between the lyrics, and the wordless highs and lows from classical music to EDM in this SXSW highlight.

From his cool climate home in Hobart, down to underground churches in Coober Pedy and up to the patience-testing humidity of Darwin, Martin Tucker crosses the country plying his remarkable ear for tuning pianos old and new, making fast friends along the way as he champions a dying art.

In 1974 South Africa, 11-year-old Marnus (Dawian van der Westhuizen) has known an idyllic childhood of family, friendship and summer holidays. When a missing fishing rod sets off a disturbing chain of events, he begins to recognise the violence and inequality his privileged world has allowed him not to see.

Over the last decade, from her shorts onwards, producer Alex White’s films have wowed audiences and industry alike. Her features include the acclaimed: Baby Teeth (2019), Talk To Me (2022) and the AFFIF title and Venice premiering Agata, The Writer (2026). Known as one of Australia’s best developers, Alex’s storytelling acumen has also been part of the success of the South Australian acclaimed Film Lab films most notably with Lesbian Space Princess.

Moderator: Rebecca Summerton (Closer Productions)

All queer on the Western Front, Emmanuel Macchia and Valentin Campagne are electric in this sensuously shot, achingly tender World War 1 drama from Close (2022) director Lukas Dhont. Rightly sharing the Best Actor award at Cannes, you’ll fall in step with these beautiful, longing soldiers.

When a fortune teller predicts that their elderly grandmother may soon die, nine members of a Thai family set out to visit nine Buddhist temples in a single day. Their pilgrimage becomes a gently funny procession of rituals, squabbles and competing obligations, revealing the rhythms of family life and contemporary Thailand.

When 8-year-old Josephine (newcomer Mason Reeves) witnesses a shocking sexual assault, her childhood is shattered. Picking up the fragments will test her loving parents (Magic Mike star Channing Tatum and Crazy Rich Asians’ Gemma Chan) to their limits in Beth de Araújo’s Sundance winner.

Led by magnetic newcomer Duda Santos, Funk plunges us into Rio's wild kinky funk scene, where a young MC's dreams of stardom unfold amid infectious music, sensual performance and the race and class realities of modern Brazil. Sensual, propulsive and riotously alive, Funk received a Special Jury Mention for Best Performance in an International Feature at Tribeca.

Rediscovered Hi8 footage drops us straight into 1995, backstage at Australia’s Summersault tour with Beastie Boys, Sonic Youth, Bikini Kill, Pavement, Beck and more. Tamra Davis’s camcorder captures the music, fashion and unguarded energy of an alternative culture in full flight.

Thoughtful Marco feels the history of art deep in his soul. But when awful news sees him placed on leave from his lecturing gig in Rome, he jumps in a beat-up Fiat and heads to Tuscany to take his young daughter on an emotional journey along the Tiber River.

Hit the road with hunky truckers whose hot and heavy hook-up in a roadside beat leads to unexpected depths. Pierre Le Gall’s haunting debut feature is a luminous insight into life, lust and love all played out in a cramped truck cabin. Winner of the inaugural Queer Palm Revelation award at Cannes.

Persuasive Gary talks his younger engineer brother Irwin into jointly bidding for an urban renewal project. Irwin’s naivety sparks a violent spiral from their Russian silent partners. Adam Driver, Scarlett Johansson and Miles Teller give great nuance to this thriller of a suburban family’s complicated aspirations to hit pay dirt.

Winner of the Un Certain Regard Prize at Cannes, Sandra Wollner's Everytime follows a family as they finally take the holiday tragedy once denied them. Beneath Tenerife's subtropical sun, past and present begin to overlap in a surprising exploration of grief, memory and forgiveness.

Rendered in desolate black and white and unfolding like a folk tale, Rose follows a woman who fought disguised as a man during the Thirty Years' War. Seeking a life of her own in a remote Protestant village, she discovers peace harder won than war.

Celebrating the best in LGBTQIA+ short filmmaking.

The third and final AFF/Samstag Expand Moving Image Commission is a collaborative moving image installation by Naina Sen (NT), Naveed Farro (Vic) and Harrison Hall (Vic) reimagining the cultural connections between West and South Asia.

The son of a Dalit postmaster and a casteless tribeswoman, PK Mahanandia endured prejudice all his life but it never dulled his beautiful smile. When a beautiful Swedish woman smiles back, the impoverished artist leaves New Delhi for the distant Borås, chasing a fate that’s written in the stars.

Almost gobbled up by a large bird, a tiny papaya seed is swept away from her loving mother tree. A grand odyssey awaits, as she sprouts legs and explores the jungle and the factories that lie beyond in this wonderfully inventive escapade that will speak to the whole family despite being dialogue-free.

Against the backdrop of the AIDS crisis, a theatre artist refuses to surrender to fear, finding solace in art, intimacy and community. Ira Sachs’ deeply felt drama is a moving ode to those who kept loving, creating and dreaming in the face of unimaginable loss.

As a child, visual artist, academic and filmmaker Dragana Jurišić adored Westerns, both American and from the mysterious former-Yugoslavian have-a-go hero, Hari Džekson. But who was Hari really? Jurišić’s kookily charming, if occasionally chilling, Sarajevo Film Festival competition documentary attempts to fill in the blanks blurred by war crimes.

Sixteen-year-old swimmer Paula crushes on Daniel, hoping to kiss him at a party she attends with her best friend, La Maestra. But excitement turns to dread in the days that follow, during a sweltering summer in Mexico City. A deft exploration of consent that every teenager should see.

Through extraordinary interviews and richly textured archive, KUMARANGK: Sacred Women's Business restores humanity to one of Australia's most divisive cultural conflicts, returning the story to the women who lived it.

At an exclusive Manila golf club, 17-year-old Isabel is one of the workers maintaining an immaculate playground for the wealthy. As her fascination with the club’s president draws her beyond its rigid social boundaries, the resort’s postcard beauty gives way to a darker world of privilege and power, revealing the club as a microcosm of the Philippines itself.

Anna and Yo are unlikely friends with an unbreakable bond. When the pair first met, Yo was 73 and Anna 24. Through archival footage, interviews, puppets and insects, filmmaker and entomologist Anna Fitch with husband Banker White, create a joyous and artful celebration of friendship.

One of the most flabbergasting documentaries you’ll see all year, Andrew Neel’s Tribeca-premiering delicacy, cooked up from Witold Szablowski’s book, confronts the personal chefs of the world’s worst dictators about their complicity. The genocidal actions of their bosses left countless souls brutally murdered while they luxuriated in mansions.

As women fight for their independence in Iran, the plastic surgery business is simultaneously booming in the nation’s capital, a place whose very architecture is likewise torn down and rebuilt on repeat. Afsaneh Salari’s tender, unjudgmental documentary, heading straight to Adelaide from Toronto International Film Festival, asks what lies behind this social phenomenon.

Legendary jazz pianist Bill Evans is unmoored by loss in this hauntingly beautiful black and white portrait. Rejecting the conventions of the biopic, it drifts through grief, memory and withdrawal, tracing a private world shaped as much by absence as by the music itself.

Plagued by migraines, frustrated filmmaker Elsa (Bárbara Lennie) mines the death of her mother and the tragedy of her friend Natalia (Milena Smit) for a screenplay. Twenty years later, Almodóvar stand-in Raúl (Leonardo Sbaraglia) writes a suspiciously similar story placing him at odds with his loyal assistant, Mónica (Aitana Sánchez-Gijón). But who is fact and who is fiction in this deeply personal, Palme d’Or-nominated reckoning with art and life, also featuring Almodóvar stalwart Rossy de Palma.

In 2022 Russia, marital suspicion spirals into violence as corporate expediency and state coercion close in. Andrey Zvyagintsev’s darkly majestic modern noir finds the same dehumanising logic at work in marriage, business and government.

A South Australian urban legend comes terrifyingly to life in this atmospheric horror from Ursula Dabrowsky. When two friends awaken the spirit of Ruby Bland in a remote cemetery, they find themselves trapped between a supernatural curse and a very real human predator.

What happens when roided-up social media influencer, Jim Parfait, who rules Paris’s queer clubs with his bulging pecs, is struck down by the heinously beige plague heterosis? It’s left to nerdy twink Lucien to save the day, if only he can keep his right-wing mum at bay.

The Shaggs are a band that defy description - formed by three New Hampshire sisters in the mid-1960s at the insistence of their controlling father to fulfil a psychic prophesy. Championed by Kurt Cobain, Patti Smith and Frank Zappa, now the Wiggins sisters tell their unlikely story in their own words.

Married through pity, Karim and Ameena eke out a passionless life in Mumbai. She clings to anonymous letters, while he’s quietly gay. When Karim finds desire in a thief named Sukka, and Ameena mistakes a pimp for her letter-writer, four lonely lives collide in longing, illusion and survival.

Ever-escalating Italian tourism threatens the way of life of Cinque Terre’s blessed locals, who are caught in a possibly toxic codependent relationship with their summer season invaders. Sanitorium (AFF 2025) director Gar O’Rourke’s latest award-winning documentary asks us to ponder if this is sustainable, or if something has to give.

If bodies fall in the misty English countryside, do they make a sound? The answer is a blood-curdling YES in Zachary Wigon’s hilariously wicked, Un Certain Regard-nominated horror starring Maika Monroe. Adapting the Virginia Feito novel, it pits her governess against a creepy family ensconced in a spooky Gothic mansion.

One of the last men standing on an all-but-abandoned Earth, grumpy janitor Zha (Da Peng) silently looks after the faded film studio left in his care. Can Zha reconnect with his cat, or will he disappear into a virtual reality game in Chinese filmmaker Xu Zao’s Berlinale-lauded animated delight.

A deep bond with unpredictable undercurrents forms between textile workers San Kyi and Theint Theint Oo. Is there a chance for something deeper between them or is the inexorable pull downwards inescapable in a Myanmar torn apart by brutal violence? Aung Phyoe’s heady drama dances between doom and desire.

Filmed across a decade, this evolving self-portrait captures gender transition from the inside out, tracing a radical transformation from hyperfemininity towards defiant masculinity while confronting the forces of class, privilege and patriarchy within Mexico’s conservative upper-middle-class society.

A luminous exploration of one of Germany’s greatest authors captured in a brief vignette - Thomas Mann’s 1948 return to Germany from exile in America. His much-anticipated pronouncement on what should be the prevailing principles for the now divided Germany is contrasted to the relationship with his despairing son, Karl. As the daughter of Mann and sister of Karl, Sandra Hüller is magnificent - as is all the cast.

This year's Don Dunstan Award recipient is internationally acclaimed actor, writer and director Leah Purcell AM. Join Leah Purcell AM in conversation with Wesley Enoch AM, a proud Quandamooka man, celebrated playwright and artistic director.

Marvel as Democracy Now! anchor Amy Goodman reveals how she built the fiercely independent news program from a community radio-syndicated show run out of a broom closet into a globally watched TV broadcast without sacrificing her values and firm belief that the fourth estate should be a force for good.

Who takes care of the emotionally scarred survivors of an atrocity after everyone else moves on? This sobering and insightful documentary bears witness to trauma's harrowing effects and the seductive pull of alternative facts — where even the unlikeliest of people can be ensnared.

When the recently transitioned Jake heads to the rural town Sweet Milk to reconnect with his dying father, he is mistaken for his cis twin brother, Sam (writer-director Harvey Zielinski). Both privileges and a chasm of doubt open, enveloping Jake and those he loves in this emotionally rich tribute to living your truth.

British avant-pop musician Patrick Wolf revisits the triumphs and traumas that shaped his life and music through a lifetime of archival material and a searching conversation with longtime friend Tilda Swinton. Delicate yet emotionally raw, Wolf exchanges mythmaking for vulnerability.

Railway dispatcher Gosha and maternity nurse Marina discover that recovering their stolen savings may demand compromises even they never imagined making. A Coen brothers-worthy premise collides with contemporary Bulgaria in this deliciously morally grey tragicomedy.

Five lifelong friends hit thirty and find adulthood hasn’t delivered what it promised. Anthony Boyle, Lola Petticrew, Joe Cole, Jay Lycurgo and Daryl McCormack form an electrifying ensemble in Clio Barnard’s funny, bruising portrait of friendship and precarious Britain. Based on the novel by Keiran Goddard.

How do you prepare for the worst when a family member is diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer’s disease? Premiering at Cannes and nominated for Best Feature at the Annecy International Animated Film Festival, Leah Nelson’s gorgeous adaptation of Sarah Leavitt’s tender graphic novel about exactly that is a salve for sore hearts.

Never meet your heroes, they say. Czech filmmaker Jana Hojdová finds out the hard way in this behind-the-scenes glimpse into the life and work of hilariously gruff cinematographer Robert Richardson. Feared and revered in equal measure, Oliver Stone, Martin Scorsese and Quentin Tarantino pay homage to his mercurial genius.

When Love Me star, Bojana Novakovic travels from Hollywood to rural Serbia to explore the life of the eccentric, tormented aunt she was never allowed to know, she is forced to face secrets about the women in her family and about herself as well. The result is a rousing documentary about the survival of four generations of women in the face of patriarchal violence.

Oscar-winning director Ryūsuke Hamaguchi returns with a luminous drama set in France, where Marie-Lou (Virginie Efira), the director of a care home, forms an unexpected friendship with Mari (Tao Okamoto), a terminally ill Japanese theatre director far from home. Together, they discover new ways of caring, connecting and living.

Alexander Murphy’s intimate observational documentary takes us into the lives of an Irish Traveller family, eking out an existence in a tiny mobile home. The ten children frolic in the fields and prepare for their elaborate communions attuned to but still free of the challenges their parents face on the fringes of an Irish village.

A collection of contemporary experimental shorts shot on S8 and 16mm around Australia. Expand your idea of what film can be featuring Richard Tuohy and Dianna Barrie’s Tooborac (Ann Arbor’s 2026 Best of the Festival), Allison Chhorn’s Eternals and Returns as well as a selection of films from artist run labs including Wombat Workshop (Port Adelaide) and AFW (Australia Wide).

Willem Dafoe enchants as Ed, a postie who once hung with Beat poets, publishing a collection that faded from memory. Falling in with a young writers’ group years later, and for Greta Lee’s out-of-work actor, Gloria, the gentle-hearted soul spies a second chance. But can you ever go back?

As D-Day nears, Eisenhower (Brendan Fraser) must trust Scottish meteorologist James Stagg (Andrew Scott), whose forecast contradicts Allied consensus. Based on David Haig's play, Pressure turns the 72 hours before the invasion into a tense chamber piece with the fate of the war resting on the weather.

Arnold, a mouse with his marriage and sanity on the line, is convinced his world is fake. When proven right, he draws from the help of his best friend's ghost and the outcast Mr. Mushroom to hatch an escape from both his town and A.L.M.A., the megacorporation controlling it.

When thousands of poisoned crabs wash ashore on England's north-east coast, veteran fisherman Stan Rennie begins a search for answers. Jeanie Finlay's stirring documentary uncovers an environmental mystery intertwined with political change, economic hardship and the quiet dignity of a resilient community.

Brother’s Keeper (2021) director Ferit Karahan elicits incredible performances from İlhan Şen, Demet Özdemir, Kaan Yildirim and Sarp Bozkurt as once-tight siblings torn asunder by family secrets buried in this mesmeric, intergenerational epic from the Kurdish visionary. All aching heart, half-glimpsed ghosts and astonishing cinematography, it’s a sublime gift.

In a small Japanese town, Tsubasa is drawn to Gyotaro, a strange, magnetic boy who claims he is an alien. Their friendship and its heartbreaking end echo across decades in a visually extraordinary animation about childhood, memory and how differently we can experience the same life-changing moments.

Made in SA showcases the best in local short films. Remember their names for when they’re famous, these filmmakers will make you laugh, cry and shudder.

Persuasive Gary talks his younger engineer brother Irwin into jointly bidding for an urban renewal project. Irwin’s naivety sparks a violent spiral from their Russian silent partners. Adam Driver, Scarlett Johansson and Miles Teller give great nuance to this thriller of a suburban family’s complicated aspirations to hit pay dirt.

The third and final AFF/Samstag Expand Moving Image Commission is a collaborative moving image installation by Naina Sen (NT), Naveed Farro (Vic) and Harrison Hall (Vic) reimagining the cultural connections between West and South Asia.

German polymath Alexander von Humboldt was welcomed by President Thomas Jefferson and his name is lent to places across the United States. So why does nobody know Humboldt or his radical musings on our interconnected world? G. Anthony Svatek’s astonishingly beautiful essay film will get you up to speed.

Depressed, broke and back living with her mother, musician Maja takes a part-time job at a local high school. Far from the career that once defined her, she begins finding unexpected value in ordinary work, new connections and a life no longer measured by ambition.

As D-Day nears, Eisenhower (Brendan Fraser) must trust Scottish meteorologist James Stagg (Andrew Scott), whose forecast contradicts Allied consensus. Based on David Haig's play, Pressure turns the 72 hours before the invasion into a tense chamber piece with the fate of the war resting on the weather.

At a competitive boarding school, teenage girls find friendship and first love while training for careers as professional mermaids in the world’s grandest aquariums. In this mesmerising pop infused fantasy, Konstantina Kotzamani (What Mary Didn’t Know) again shows she has a wonderful eye for lyrical images and for truly original female coming-of-age stories.

Through extraordinary interviews and richly textured archive, KUMARANGK: Sacred Women's Business restores humanity to one of Australia's most divisive cultural conflicts, returning the story to the women who lived it.

In Damien Hauser's wholly original Memory of Princess Mumbi, a filmmaker in retro-futuristic 2093 Africa falls for Mumbi, an actress who dares him to make art without AI. Part mockumentary, part epic romance, the film is Hauser's personal meditation on grief, and a provocation on AI's promise and ethical cost.

Against the backdrop of the 1970s Chilean military coup, two CIA operatives navigate loyalty, conspiracy and the consequences of foreign intervention.

Sixteen-year-old swimmer Paula crushes on Daniel, hoping to kiss him at a party she attends with her best friend, La Maestra. But excitement turns to dread in the days that follow, during a sweltering summer in Mexico City. A deft exploration of consent that every teenager should see.

The third and final AFF/Samstag Expand Moving Image Commission is a collaborative moving image installation by Naina Sen (NT), Naveed Farro (Vic) and Harrison Hall (Vic) reimagining the cultural connections between West and South Asia.

The AFF Youth Filmmaking Competition is an opportunity for South Australian students and young people to experience the power of film, make industry connections, and share their own stories on the big screen.

The AFF Youth Filmmaking Competition is an opportunity for South Australian students and young people to experience the power of film, make industry connections, and share their own stories on the big screen.

Almost gobbled up by a large bird, a tiny papaya seed is swept away from her loving mother tree. A grand odyssey awaits, as she sprouts legs and explores the jungle and the factories that lie beyond in this wonderfully inventive escapade that will speak to the whole family despite being dialogue-free.

Hear from young filmmakers on how they established their filmmaking careers during the 2026 AFF Youth Schools Screening Day.

After the shocking backlash against his 2014 truth-telling book, Dark Emu, the reclusive writer Bruce Pascoe retreats to the tranquil peace of his beloved farm, Yumburra. Inviting documentarian Grace McKenzie into his calm place, we all benefit from his immense generosity as this soul-replenishing portrait unfurls.

When the recently transitioned Jake heads to the rural town Sweet Milk to reconnect with his dying father, he is mistaken for his cis twin brother, Sam (writer-director Harvey Zielinski). Both privileges and a chasm of doubt open, enveloping Jake and those he loves in this emotionally rich tribute to living your truth.

When thousands of poisoned crabs wash ashore on England's north-east coast, veteran fisherman Stan Rennie begins a search for answers. Jeanie Finlay's stirring documentary uncovers an environmental mystery intertwined with political change, economic hardship and the quiet dignity of a resilient community.

One of the most flabbergasting documentaries you’ll see all year, Andrew Neel’s Tribeca-premiering delicacy, cooked up from Witold Szablowski’s book, confronts the personal chefs of the world’s worst dictators about their complicity. The genocidal actions of their bosses left countless souls brutally murdered while they luxuriated in mansions.

One of the last men standing on an all-but-abandoned Earth, grumpy janitor Zha (Da Peng) silently looks after the faded film studio left in his care. Can Zha reconnect with his cat, or will he disappear into a virtual reality game in Chinese filmmaker Xu Zao’s Berlinale-lauded animated delight.

A celebration of the best in Animated short filmmaking from Australia and around the world

In New Jersey, a car accident brings Audrey and Eli together, two Korean Americans carrying different histories of family and emotional damage. Stephanie Ahn’s Sundance prize-winning debut follows the tentative, difficult-to-define connection that grows between them.

The third and final AFF/Samstag Expand Moving Image Commission is a collaborative moving image installation by Naina Sen (NT), Naveed Farro (Vic) and Harrison Hall (Vic) reimagining the cultural connections between West and South Asia.

Railway dispatcher Gosha and maternity nurse Marina discover that recovering their stolen savings may demand compromises even they never imagined making. A Coen brothers-worthy premise collides with contemporary Bulgaria in this deliciously morally grey tragicomedy.

As women fight for their independence in Iran, the plastic surgery business is simultaneously booming in the nation’s capital, a place whose very architecture is likewise torn down and rebuilt on repeat. Afsaneh Salari’s tender, unjudgmental documentary, heading straight to Adelaide from Toronto International Film Festival, asks what lies behind this social phenomenon.

Winner of the Un Certain Regard Prize at Cannes, Sandra Wollner's Everytime follows a family as they finally take the holiday tragedy once denied them. Beneath Tenerife's subtropical sun, past and present begin to overlap in a surprising exploration of grief, memory and forgiveness.

When a fortune teller predicts that their elderly grandmother may soon die, nine members of a Thai family set out to visit nine Buddhist temples in a single day. Their pilgrimage becomes a gently funny procession of rituals, squabbles and competing obligations, revealing the rhythms of family life and contemporary Thailand.

In 2022 Russia, marital suspicion spirals into violence as corporate expediency and state coercion close in. Andrey Zvyagintsev’s darkly majestic modern noir finds the same dehumanising logic at work in marriage, business and government.

A car accident reunites Allie with estranged school friend Kaz, a field sound recordist documenting a changing natural world. Their escape into Victoria’s High Country becomes an offbeat midlife road movie, as old grievances resurface and two friends discover what can happen when they start listening again.

British avant-pop musician Patrick Wolf revisits the triumphs and traumas that shaped his life and music through a lifetime of archival material and a searching conversation with longtime friend Tilda Swinton. Delicate yet emotionally raw, Wolf exchanges mythmaking for vulnerability.

A special night for young filmmakers and families of the nominated films from the AFF Youth Filmmaking Competition.

Through extraordinary interviews and richly textured archive, KUMARANGK: Sacred Women's Business restores humanity to one of Australia's most divisive cultural conflicts, returning the story to the women who lived it.

Against the backdrop of the AIDS crisis, a theatre artist refuses to surrender to fear, finding solace in art, intimacy and community. Ira Sachs’ deeply felt drama is a moving ode to those who kept loving, creating and dreaming in the face of unimaginable loss.

You’ll come to mourn the loss of a glacier every bit as much as a family member when you melt into Sara Dosa’s astonishing new film. As narrated by the Icelandic poet Andri Snær Magnason, who pours his family’s soul into it, it’s a spellbinding elegy for a fast-vanishing majesty.

Led by magnetic newcomer Duda Santos, Funk plunges us into Rio's wild kinky funk scene, where a young MC's dreams of stardom unfold amid infectious music, sensual performance and the race and class realities of modern Brazil. Sensual, propulsive and riotously alive, Funk received a Special Jury Mention for Best Performance in an International Feature at Tribeca.

The third and final AFF/Samstag Expand Moving Image Commission is a collaborative moving image installation by Naina Sen (NT), Naveed Farro (Vic) and Harrison Hall (Vic) reimagining the cultural connections between West and South Asia.

Through extraordinary interviews and richly textured archive, KUMARANGK: Sacred Women's Business restores humanity to one of Australia's most divisive cultural conflicts, returning the story to the women who lived it.

The son of a Dalit postmaster and a casteless tribeswoman, PK Mahanandia endured prejudice all his life but it never dulled his beautiful smile. When a beautiful Swedish woman smiles back, the impoverished artist leaves New Delhi for the distant Borås, chasing a fate that’s written in the stars.

How do you prepare for the worst when a family member is diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer’s disease? Premiering at Cannes and nominated for Best Feature at the Annecy International Animated Film Festival, Leah Nelson’s gorgeous adaptation of Sarah Leavitt’s tender graphic novel about exactly that is a salve for sore hearts.

Oscar-winning director Ryūsuke Hamaguchi returns with a luminous drama set in France, where Marie-Lou (Virginie Efira), the director of a care home, forms an unexpected friendship with Mari (Tao Okamoto), a terminally ill Japanese theatre director far from home. Together, they discover new ways of caring, connecting and living.

Arnold, a mouse with his marriage and sanity on the line, is convinced his world is fake. When proven right, he draws from the help of his best friend's ghost and the outcast Mr. Mushroom to hatch an escape from both his town and A.L.M.A., the megacorporation controlling it.

Anna and Yo are unlikely friends with an unbreakable bond. When the pair first met, Yo was 73 and Anna 24. Through archival footage, interviews, puppets and insects, filmmaker and entomologist Anna Fitch with husband Banker White, create a joyous and artful celebration of friendship.

Plagued by migraines, frustrated filmmaker Elsa (Bárbara Lennie) mines the death of her mother and the tragedy of her friend Natalia (Milena Smit) for a screenplay. Twenty years later, Almodóvar stand-in Raúl (Leonardo Sbaraglia) writes a suspiciously similar story placing him at odds with his loyal assistant, Mónica (Aitana Sánchez-Gijón). But who is fact and who is fiction in this deeply personal, Palme d’Or-nominated reckoning with art and life, also featuring Almodóvar stalwart Rossy de Palma.

Made in SA showcases the best in local short films. Remember their names for when they’re famous, these filmmakers will make you laugh, cry and shudder.

After the shocking backlash against his 2014 truth-telling book, Dark Emu, the reclusive writer Bruce Pascoe retreats to the tranquil peace of his beloved farm, Yumburra. Inviting documentarian Grace McKenzie into his calm place, we all benefit from his immense generosity as this soul-replenishing portrait unfurls.

Confronted with a world that too often limits the capabilities of people with Down syndrome, Sonja (Olivia Hargroder) carves her own path on the dance floor alongside cheerleading mate Hakim (Elijah Williams). If only her gran, played by The Diplomat’s Penny Downie, can let her fly free.

Depressed, broke and back living with her mother, musician Maja takes a part-time job at a local high school. Far from the career that once defined her, she begins finding unexpected value in ordinary work, new connections and a life no longer measured by ambition.

Married through pity, Karim and Ameena eke out a passionless life in Mumbai. She clings to anonymous letters, while he’s quietly gay. When Karim finds desire in a thief named Sukka, and Ameena mistakes a pimp for her letter-writer, four lonely lives collide in longing, illusion and survival.

Summoned to the secluded estate of a celebrated pianist, young adoptee June discovers a world of beauty and artistic brilliance sustained by a terrifying covenant. A haunting work of folk horror where refinement masks something far more insatiable.

A luminous exploration of one of Germany’s greatest authors captured in a brief vignette - Thomas Mann’s 1948 return to Germany from exile in America. His much-anticipated pronouncement on what should be the prevailing principles for the now divided Germany is contrasted to the relationship with his despairing son, Karl. As the daughter of Mann and sister of Karl, Sandra Hüller is magnificent - as is all the cast.

The Shaggs are a band that defy description - formed by three New Hampshire sisters in the mid-1960s at the insistence of their controlling father to fulfil a psychic prophesy. Championed by Kurt Cobain, Patti Smith and Frank Zappa, now the Wiggins sisters tell their unlikely story in their own words.

Hit the road with hunky truckers whose hot and heavy hook-up in a roadside beat leads to unexpected depths. Pierre Le Gall’s haunting debut feature is a luminous insight into life, lust and love all played out in a cramped truck cabin. Winner of the inaugural Queer Palm Revelation award at Cannes.

The third and final AFF/Samstag Expand Moving Image Commission is a collaborative moving image installation by Naina Sen (NT), Naveed Farro (Vic) and Harrison Hall (Vic) reimagining the cultural connections between West and South Asia.

Never meet your heroes, they say. Czech filmmaker Jana Hojdová finds out the hard way in this behind-the-scenes glimpse into the life and work of hilariously gruff cinematographer Robert Richardson. Feared and revered in equal measure, Oliver Stone, Martin Scorsese and Quentin Tarantino pay homage to his mercurial genius.

Who takes care of the emotionally scarred survivors of an atrocity after everyone else moves on? This sobering and insightful documentary bears witness to trauma's harrowing effects and the seductive pull of alternative facts — where even the unlikeliest of people can be ensnared.

In 1974 South Africa, 11-year-old Marnus (Dawian van der Westhuizen) has known an idyllic childhood of family, friendship and summer holidays. When a missing fishing rod sets off a disturbing chain of events, he begins to recognise the violence and inequality his privileged world has allowed him not to see.

As a child, visual artist, academic and filmmaker Dragana Jurišić adored Westerns, both American and from the mysterious former-Yugoslavian have-a-go hero, Hari Džekson. But who was Hari really? Jurišić’s kookily charming, if occasionally chilling, Sarajevo Film Festival competition documentary attempts to fill in the blanks blurred by war crimes.

Marvel as Democracy Now! anchor Amy Goodman reveals how she built the fiercely independent news program from a community radio-syndicated show run out of a broom closet into a globally watched TV broadcast without sacrificing her values and firm belief that the fourth estate should be a force for good.

In a small Japanese town, Tsubasa is drawn to Gyotaro, a strange, magnetic boy who claims he is an alien. Their friendship and its heartbreaking end echo across decades in a visually extraordinary animation about childhood, memory and how differently we can experience the same life-changing moments.

Agata (Mia Wasikowska) a disillusioned writer, arrives in Sarajevo to write a novel set during the Bosnian war. As she speaks with survivors, her project begins to unravel. In the house where she’s staying, obscene art objects begin to vanish, and the line between lived experience and fiction starts to dissolve.

Ever-escalating Italian tourism threatens the way of life of Cinque Terre’s blessed locals, who are caught in a possibly toxic codependent relationship with their summer season invaders. Sanitorium (AFF 2025) director Gar O’Rourke’s latest award-winning documentary asks us to ponder if this is sustainable, or if something has to give.

River (Mia Barret) wants to run away from it all, following the tragic death of her mother. But when she falls in with bad boy Marcus (My Brilliant Career’s William McKenna), his insistence on ‘no strings attached’ actually leads the way to a place of hope and healing for both wounded souls.

A deaf person can feel music’s beat through their feet. Powerhouse Amber Galloway reckons the community deserves more. Join her bootcamp for ASL translators, teaching them to reveal the heart of a song beating between the lyrics, and the wordless highs and lows from classical music to EDM in this SXSW highlight.

When 8-year-old Josephine (newcomer Mason Reeves) witnesses a shocking sexual assault, her childhood is shattered. Picking up the fragments will test her loving parents (Magic Mike star Channing Tatum and Crazy Rich Asians’ Gemma Chan) to their limits in Beth de Araújo’s Sundance winner.

Sweeping mountain winds and distant military explosions shape daily life for Gara and teenage Nada in the potent and transportive To Hold a Mountain. Living beside a NATO military training ground in Montenegro’s mountains, the pair face the threat of displacement as another danger looms: Nada’s father is soon to be released from prison.

Mahsa Karampour left Iran for France. Her brother, Siavash, stayed and became an underground punk-rocker, later exiled to New York. Years on, Mahsa travels to reconnect – through backgammon, road trips and a very personal voiceover in Persian – in a film as much about her as him.

Brother’s Keeper (2021) director Ferit Karahan elicits incredible performances from İlhan Şen, Demet Özdemir, Kaan Yildirim and Sarp Bozkurt as once-tight siblings torn asunder by family secrets buried in this mesmeric, intergenerational epic from the Kurdish visionary. All aching heart, half-glimpsed ghosts and astonishing cinematography, it’s a sublime gift.

Celebrating local emerging filmmakers, our Australian Shorts strand highlights innovative and passionate local storytelling.

Bukal Bukal and campfire yarns at Yitpi Yartapuultiku is a free all ages event on the banks of the Port River. Bring your picnic blanket or camp chair and enjoy the world premiere of Bukal Bukal (screening at 7:30PM) and guests in conversation beside the fire. 

Simon Tedeschi AM to perform a brief piano recital ahead of the new 4K restoration premiere.

The compelling and poignant story of a young man who defies his father’s wishes to pursue his dreams. Shine is a story of rebellion and individuality through the eyes of a pianist whose only form of self-expression is found in the keys of his instrument.

Who needs romance when you’re an independent fisherwoman with no time for smelling nice? Such is the lot of Olivia Colman in Eleanor Wilson and Alex Huston Fischer’s fantastic feature. Everything changes when magical craftwork pairs her with Alexander Skarsgård’s hunky basket case in this satirical comedy about sex and marriage.

If bodies fall in the misty English countryside, do they make a sound? The answer is a blood-curdling YES in Zachary Wigon’s hilariously wicked, Un Certain Regard-nominated horror starring Maika Monroe. Adapting the Virginia Feito novel, it pits her governess against a creepy family ensconced in a spooky Gothic mansion.

All queer on the Western Front, Emmanuel Macchia and Valentin Campagne are electric in this sensuously shot, achingly tender World War 1 drama from Close (2022) director Lukas Dhont. Rightly sharing the Best Actor award at Cannes, you’ll fall in step with these beautiful, longing soldiers.

At an exclusive Manila golf club, 17-year-old Isabel is one of the workers maintaining an immaculate playground for the wealthy. As her fascination with the club’s president draws her beyond its rigid social boundaries, the resort’s postcard beauty gives way to a darker world of privilege and power, revealing the club as a microcosm of the Philippines itself.

Thoughtful Marco feels the history of art deep in his soul. But when awful news sees him placed on leave from his lecturing gig in Rome, he jumps in a beat-up Fiat and heads to Tuscany to take his young daughter on an emotional journey along the Tiber River.

A David vs. Goliath documentary on Yidinji activist Henrietta Marrie AM, who reformed the Australian Government and UN to benefit Indigenous people. Now, she takes on the British Museum, fighting to reclaim her family’s stolen artefacts and seeking justice for Indigenous cultural heritage.

At his Dallas clinic, Bill Moore has built a growing business offering men penis enlargement procedures. Funny, graphic and unexpectedly matter of fact, Manhood follows Moore and his clients into a world where ordinary male insecurity is measured in inches and increasingly treated as something money can fix.

Rediscovered Hi8 footage drops us straight into 1995, backstage at Australia’s Summersault tour with Beastie Boys, Sonic Youth, Bikini Kill, Pavement, Beck and more. Tamra Davis’s camcorder captures the music, fashion and unguarded energy of an alternative culture in full flight.

At AFF 2026, Moviejuice returns with an evening of historical conspiracy and paranoia amongst the abyssal depths of the archive. Kevin Walker and Jack Auen’s Rotterdam favourite Chronovisor and local hero Gabriel Bath’s Scum ‘87 burrow through hidden records and esoteric media in a series of late-night research binges that gradually take over the psyche. Falling down a rabbit hole of mysterious literary and audiovisual ephemera, both films form a DIY diptych on the pleasures and horrors of the deep dive, and the manifold ways that one can find themselves trapped in the past.

Five lifelong friends hit thirty and find adulthood hasn’t delivered what it promised. Anthony Boyle, Lola Petticrew, Joe Cole, Jay Lycurgo and Daryl McCormack form an electrifying ensemble in Clio Barnard’s funny, bruising portrait of friendship and precarious Britain. Based on the novel by Keiran Goddard.

Filmed across a decade, this evolving self-portrait captures gender transition from the inside out, tracing a radical transformation from hyperfemininity towards defiant masculinity while confronting the forces of class, privilege and patriarchy within Mexico’s conservative upper-middle-class society.

Princess Diana inhabits a Technicolor storybook world of gauchos, puppets and painted sets, until a magical bracelet offers escape. As fantasy fractures and new realities emerge, this shape-shifting Chilean tale asks whether freedom can ever release us from the bonds of love and obligation.

At a competitive boarding school, teenage girls find friendship and first love while training for careers as professional mermaids in the world’s grandest aquariums. In this mesmerising pop infused fantasy, Konstantina Kotzamani (What Mary Didn’t Know) again shows she has a wonderful eye for lyrical images and for truly original female coming-of-age stories.

The story of Britain's postwar atomic weapons programme and the devastating legacy for the thousands of service personnel who took part and the impact on their families and indigenous communities. This BBC Two film pieces together testimony and pioneering journalism - weaving chilling allegations of decades of cover up at the heart of government with the shattering human cost of Britain’s race to become a global nuclear power. 

Burn bright enough and you’ll be remembered forever, no matter how tragically short your life is cut. Such was the fate of game-changing artist Jean-Michel Basquiat – friend of Madonna, Grace Jones, Debbie Harry, Keith Haring and Andy Warhol – who blazed an indelible trail before joining the infamous 27 Club. But when legend envelops your legacy, with Basquiat’s brilliantly bold works going for as much as US$110 million, the truth can get lost. Viridiana Lieberman and Quinn Whitney Wilson’s iridescent documentary sets the record straight.

Rendered in desolate black and white and unfolding like a folk tale, Rose follows a woman who fought disguised as a man during the Thirty Years' War. Seeking a life of her own in a remote Protestant village, she discovers peace harder won than war.

A deep bond with unpredictable undercurrents forms between textile workers San Kyi and Theint Theint Oo. Is there a chance for something deeper between them or is the inexorable pull downwards inescapable in a Myanmar torn apart by brutal violence? Aung Phyoe’s heady drama dances between doom and desire.

Alexander Murphy’s intimate observational documentary takes us into the lives of an Irish Traveller family, eking out an existence in a tiny mobile home. The ten children frolic in the fields and prepare for their elaborate communions attuned to but still free of the challenges their parents face on the fringes of an Irish village.

After a sudden loss, middle-age ballroom dancer Haru (Rinko Kikuchi) goes back to the dance studio to get her groove back, only to find a new sexy instructor who inspires more than just slides across the dance floor. Winner of Best direction at Sundance.

Summoned to the secluded estate of a celebrated pianist, young adoptee June discovers a world of beauty and artistic brilliance sustained by a terrifying covenant. A haunting work of folk horror where refinement masks something far more insatiable.

From his cool climate home in Hobart, down to underground churches in Coober Pedy and up to the patience-testing humidity of Darwin, Martin Tucker crosses the country plying his remarkable ear for tuning pianos old and new, making fast friends along the way as he champions a dying art.

German polymath Alexander von Humboldt was welcomed by President Thomas Jefferson and his name is lent to places across the United States. So why does nobody know Humboldt or his radical musings on our interconnected world? G. Anthony Svatek’s astonishingly beautiful essay film will get you up to speed.

Inspired by his physicist father, Josef Gatti transforms scientific experiments into a sensory work of art. Captured entirely in camera without visual effects or digital manipulation, Phenomena reveals hidden worlds beyond ordinary perception. 

Legendary jazz pianist Bill Evans is unmoored by loss in this hauntingly beautiful black and white portrait. Rejecting the conventions of the biopic, it drifts through grief, memory and withdrawal, tracing a private world shaped as much by absence as by the music itself.

Willem Dafoe enchants as Ed, a postie who once hung with Beat poets, publishing a collection that faded from memory. Falling in with a young writers’ group years later, and for Greta Lee’s out-of-work actor, Gloria, the gentle-hearted soul spies a second chance. But can you ever go back?

When Love Me star, Bojana Novakovic travels from Hollywood to rural Serbia to explore the life of the eccentric, tormented aunt she was never allowed to know, she is forced to face secrets about the women in her family and about herself as well. The result is a rousing documentary about the survival of four generations of women in the face of patriarchal violence.

In Damien Hauser's wholly original Memory of Princess Mumbi, a filmmaker in retro-futuristic 2093 Africa falls for Mumbi, an actress who dares him to make art without AI. Part mockumentary, part epic romance, the film is Hauser's personal meditation on grief, and a provocation on AI's promise and ethical cost.

In a world where the internet is slowly replacing faith, a lonely South African pastor, who guides similarly lost addicts, believes she’s found true love online with a man posing as ‘Jason Momoa’. But when financial disaster follows, the bedrock of her faith crumbles in this thoroughly modern musing on addiction and belief.

What happens when roided-up social media influencer, Jim Parfait, who rules Paris’s queer clubs with his bulging pecs, is struck down by the heinously beige plague heterosis? It’s left to nerdy twink Lucien to save the day, if only he can keep his right-wing mum at bay.

Set in World War 2 France during the early months of the German Occupation, Emmanuel Marre’s Cannes-winning screenplay grapples with the personal and the political at a moment of profound national upheaval. Anchored by Swann Arlaud’s gripping central performance, A Man of His Time is a sly, unsettling meditation on power and opportunism.

Everything is not going well. Audrey’s life is adrift after a breakup, a stalled creative path and a recent loss. Working in aged care, she forms an unlikely bond with Harold (Jonathan Pryce), opening a space for hard-won clarity around grief, friendship and the work she has avoided.