Documentaries

Truth is definitely stranger than fiction with the Documentaries strand, which presents – and probes – the many facets of real life. From famous and not-so-famous faces to spectacular and far-flung places, these films are inspiring, blood-boiling, entertaining, educational, emotional and true.

Also within this strand is a suite of ‘MINI Selects’, presented by MIFF 2023 Major Partner MINI.

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
Selling Fast
Abebe – Butterfly Song

Abebe – Butterfly Song

Director Rosie Jones

Discover the musical legacy and enduring friendship between celebrated Papuan musician George Telek and Not Drowning, Waving’s David Bridie.

Read More →
Anselm

Anselm

Director Wim Wenders

German auteur Wim Wenders’s majestic 3D portrait of compatriot, artworld luminary and friend Anselm Kiefer.

Read More →
Art Talent Show

Art Talent Show

This dryly humorous, Wiseman-esque film about an esteemed Czech art school asks: who gets to decide what art is?

Read More →
Australia's Open

Australia's Open

Director Ili Baré

Relive the most thrilling moments of Australia’s beloved tennis tournament in this chronicle of its ascent to top-seed status on the global stage.

Read More →
Standby
Beyond Utopia

Beyond Utopia

This pulse-racing nonfiction thriller follows the individuals risking their lives to defect from North Korea and the pastor granting them passage.

Read More →
Selling Fast
The Buriti Flower

The Buriti Flower

This Cannes-winning blend of documentary and fiction is an intoxicating portrait of the Indigenous Krahô people and their unwavering resistance.

Read More →
The Carnival

The Carnival

Amid bushfires, the pandemic and punters’ changing tastes, the family behind the Bells Family Carnival fight to preserve its century-long legacy.

Read More →
The Coolbaroo Club

The Coolbaroo Club

Restored by the National Film and Sound Archive, this film recounts how a haven of Indigenous dance and activism arose from segregated postwar Perth.

Read More →
The Disappearance of Shere Hite

The Disappearance of Shere Hite

Pioneering sexologist Shere Hite is rescued from history’s margins in this fascinating portrait from Oscar-nominated documentarian Nicole Newnham.

Read More →
Ego: The Michael Gudinski Story

Ego: The Michael Gudinski Story

The wild ride of maverick entrepreneur Michael Gudinski, who defied convention and revolutionised the Australian music industry over five decades.

Read More →
Four Daughters

Four Daughters

A mother and two of her daughters are joined by actors to work through their family history and grasp the other two daughters’ heartbreaking choices.

Read More →
Selling Fast
Happy Clothes: A Film About Patricia Field

Happy Clothes: A Film About Patricia Field

Venture behind the pink tutu with the legendary Sex and the City stylist to discover the creative process that made her a New York icon.

Read More →
The Hidden Spring

The Hidden Spring

Divided by 4000 kilometres, a son and his dying father connect in this profoundly intimate documentary debut.

Read More →
Selling Fast
I Heard It Through the Grapevine

I Heard It Through the Grapevine

From the Deep South to DC, civil rights pioneer and I Am Not Your Negro subject James Baldwin revisits key sites in the US fight for racial equality.

Read More →
Iron Butterflies

Iron Butterflies

In this surreal and haunting documentary, a Ukrainian filmmaker obsessively sifts through the shrapnel of the MH17 plane crash.

Read More →
Selling Fast
It's Only Life After All

It's Only Life After All

On Her Shoulders director Alexandria Bombach recounts how two unassuming childhood friends became lesbian icons as folk-rock duo Indigo Girls.

Read More →
Standby
Joan Baez I Am a Noise

Joan Baez I Am a Noise

Tracing her stratospheric rise, this portrait of the legendary folk singer and civil rights activist reveals a rich life not without its struggles.

Read More →
Keeping Hope

Keeping Hope

Mark Coles Smith (Sweet As) faces down a traumatic event from his past in the hope of helping young First Nations men in the Kimberley.

Read More →
Kindred

Kindred

An autobiographical story about the complexities of being an Aboriginal child raised in a white world, and a celebration of friendship and resilience.

Read More →
Kiss the Future

Kiss the Future

Produced by Ben Affleck and Matt Damon, this film recounts how local musicians banded together with U2 to offer hope to Bosnians in war-torn Sarajevo.

Read More →
Le Spectre de Boko Haram

Le Spectre de Boko Haram

Winner of Rotterdam’s top prize, this moving documentary explores the lives of Cameroonian children at the edge of a war zone.

Read More →
Little Richard: I Am Everything

Little Richard: I Am Everything

A rollicking deep dive into the life of one of rock ’n’ roll’s most exhilarating personalities, whose queerness was hidden in plain sight.

Read More →
Standby
Lost Angel: The Genius of Judee Sill

Lost Angel: The Genius of Judee Sill

This essential music documentary asks: why is the 1970s’ most original and ethereal folk singer almost forgotten today?

Read More →
Memory Film: A Filmmaker's Diary

Memory Film: A Filmmaker's Diary

Revered filmmaker Jeni Thornley (Maidens, MIFF 1979) composes an immersive cine-poem from her extensive super-8 archive spanning three decades.

Read More →
Milisuthando

Milisuthando

This poetic, visually striking meditation on growing up under apartheid in South Africa is unlike any documentary memoir you’ve seen before.

Read More →
The Mother of All Lies

The Mother of All Lies

Winner of Un Certain Regard’s Best Director and L’Œil d’Or at Cannes, this Moroccan documentary sets out to untangle personal and national secrets.

Read More →
Selling Fast
Mutiny In Heaven: The Birthday Party

Mutiny In Heaven: The Birthday Party

Director Ian White

The thrilling, debauched and frequently hilarious adventures of the legendary Melbourne post-punk band, in their own words.

Read More →
Paradise

Paradise

Abandoned by an indifferent government, a remote Siberian village stands united in the face of a massive forest fire that threatens its future.

Read More →
Pictures of Ghosts

Pictures of Ghosts

Brazil’s modern master returns with a haunting tribute to the filmgoing experience in this Cannes-touted documentary.

Read More →
R21 aka Restoring Solidarity

R21 aka Restoring Solidarity

This time capsule of an extraordinary unseen history is a work of documentation and preservation – both of a moment in time and of the moving image.

Read More →
Rebel With a Cause - Part 1

Rebel With a Cause - Part 1

Four First Nations trailblazers – a senator, a magistrate, a media icon and a poet – put everything on the line for a brighter future.

Read More →
Rebel With a Cause - Part 2

Rebel With a Cause - Part 2

Four First Nations trailblazers – a senator, a magistrate, a media icon and a poet – put everything on the line for a brighter future.

Read More →
Standby
Room 999

Room 999

David Cronenberg, Baz Luhrmann, Claire Denis and a host of directors discuss cinema’s future in this riveting sequel to Wim Wenders’s 1982 classic.

Read More →
Rose Gold

Rose Gold

Sit courtside as the Boomers win their history-making Olympic medal and affirm Australia as a force to be reckoned with in global basketball.

Read More →
Standby
Smoke Sauna Sisterhood

Smoke Sauna Sisterhood

Director Anna Hints

In the southern Estonian woods, a group of women talk and embrace the soul-cleansing power of steam in this Sundance award-winning documentary.

Read More →
Squaring the Circle (The Story of Hipgnosis)

Squaring the Circle (The Story of Hipgnosis)

Music video auteur, photographer and Control director Anton Corbijn takes history for a spin, demystifing the vinyl record artwork of the masters.

Read More →
A Storm Foretold

A Storm Foretold

Cartoon villain, master manipulator, traitor or true patriot? You decide in this engrossing portrait of Donald Trump’s wily adviser Roger Stone.

Read More →
Selling Fast
This Is Going to Be Big

This Is Going to Be Big

A cast of neurodivergent teens prepare to come of age and hit the stage in their school’s time-travelling, John Farnham–themed musical.

Read More →
Time Bomb Y2K

Time Bomb Y2K

This archival explosion relives the wild and unhinged madness of the turn of the millennium.

Read More →
Ukraine Guernica - Artist War

Ukraine Guernica - Artist War

Activist and filmmaker George Gittoes follows the frontline artists daring to stand up to the Russian invasions of Ukraine and Afghanistan.

Read More →
You Can Call Me Bill

You Can Call Me Bill

From Star Trek to actual space travel, 92-year-old William Shatner has done it all. Alexandre O. Philippe beams us up with this touching tribute.

Read More →
Standby
Youth (Spring)

Youth (Spring)

Director Wang Bing

Revered auteur Wang Bing (Ta’ang; Alone) documents the breakneck pace of China’s garment factories.

Read More →


MINI Selects


PRESENTED BY

MINI logo

Inspired by its ‘Big Love’ attitude to life, MINI has partnered with MIFF to present a selection of films within our Documentaries strand that highlight the universality of the human condition. Regardless of age, creed, culture, ability, gender or sexuality, we all have the power to enrich our own and others’ lives.
 

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
Casa Susanna

Casa Susanna

Deep in the US’s Catskill Mountains of the 50s and 60s sat a refuge for transgender women and cross-dressing men to experience life without fear.

Read More →
The Echo

The Echo

A double Berlinale award winner capturing the joys, heartaches and rhythms of rural Mexican life as seen through the eyes of children and young women.

Read More →
Selling Fast
The Eternal Memory

The Eternal Memory

This stirring Sundance Grand Jury Prize winner chronicles the love story of a Chilean couple navigating Alzheimer’s disease.

Read More →
Fledglings

Fledglings

Director Lidia Duda

Three children spread their wings as they farewell their parents and enter a boarding school for students who are blind or have low vision.

Read More →
Invisible Beauty

Invisible Beauty

An intimate self-portrait of Black model, booking agent and fashion changemaker Bethann Hardison and her challenge to the colourist status quo.

Read More →
On the Adamant

On the Adamant

Winner of the Berlinale Golden Bear, this empathetic film invites viewers to spend time with the residents of a floating art-therapy centre in Paris.

Read More →
A Still Small Voice

A Still Small Voice

This Sundance US Documentary Directing Award winner is a revelatory portrait of a hospital chaplain and the people under her care.

Read More →
The Tuba Thieves

The Tuba Thieves

Described by its maker as a “meditation on access and loss”, this trailblazing film reframes cinema from a d/Deaf and hard-of-hearing perspective.

Read More →