Blake Williams returns to MIFF with a stereoscopic 3D piece that collapses time, distance and intimacy.

Tiriki Onus thought he knew his grandfather Bill, until an unearthed film reel suggests he might have been the first ever Aboriginal filmmaker.

Short films by emerging filmmakers from Australia participating in the MIFF Accelerator Lab 2021. See the work of tomorrow’s hottest directors today.

Short films by emerging filmmakers from Australia participating in the MIFF Accelerator Lab 2021. See the work of tomorrow’s hottest directors today.

Hot Docs 2021’s Best Canadian Short Documentary winner turns the lens on Saïda’s, a salon where Tunisian women can talk politics while getting their hair done.

An aspiring Peruvian performer must decide whether she’s dancing for others or for herself.

A visionary exploration of the inherent biases in surveillance technology from one of North America’s most fascinating and inventive documentary filmmakers.

In 1960s rural India, a village chief and his son resist the pressure of conforming to the new world of Christianity.

Adam Driver and Marion Cotillard star in Leos Carax’s bizarre, brazen musical – the Best Director–winning Cannes film on everyone’s lips.

Courtney Barnett pulls back the curtain in this intimate first-person exposition on creativity, vulnerability and artistic life on the road.

In the midst of a global amnesia pandemic, one man is sent to a government facility to remember who he is.

For Indigenous Australian rugby league players, a pre-game ‘unity dance’ is an important step towards celebrating their cultures and combating entrenched racism.

This psychological crime thriller pushes genre into daring territory and dazzles with a lush visual style that heralds the arrival of a major new Chinese filmmaking talent.

Zoe Terakes voices a sex-crazed twentysomething in this lurid fever dream of queerness in lockdown.

In the woods, a young woman and man scuffle as they fight for life.

An unplanned pregnancy unites two very different Costa Rican women in unique ways.

The perpetration and subsequent cover-up of one of the 20th century’s worst mass murders are examined in detail in Sergei Loznitsa’s remarkable archival collage.

A young Vietnamese-French woman is faced with the communist takeover of Saigon on 30 April 1975.

Sex is fodder for black comedy in this scathing portrayal of life in the age of COVID-19.

A bereaved single mother does battle with the Iranian justice system in this tense drama.

An African migrant living in Spain is confronted with the bitter meaning of ‘home’.

Amid Iran’s widespread 2019 floods, three young musicians set out for a career-making gig in Tehran. But as the water rises, their chances of making it on time diminish.

A chance meeting paves the way for a deeper connection.

An explosive study of a woman unravelling, and awakening, amid religious intolerance, domestic indifference and gender-based persecution.

Commune or cult? This epic documentary illuminates the Rajneesh sannyasin movement in 1980s Fremantle, as told by those who lived through it.

A mixed martial arts fighter discovers she’s pregnant in the lead-up to the most important fight of her career.

One of world cinema’s most famous locations becomes the backdrop for this intricate relationship drama by Mia Hansen-Løve.

A collection of the best short films of the festival, as chosen by the MIFF Shorts Awards Jury and the MIFF Shorts Programmer.

Michael Caine and Aubrey Plaza match wits – and red pens – as a cranky author and peppy publisher in this rollicking literary comedy.

The film that made Tom Hanks a genuine star is now roughly the same age as its grown-up lead was, yet it remains equally as innocent and charming.

Charlotte Rampling guides you through underwater caves filled with bioluminescent creatures in this SXSW Virtual Cinema Competition Audience Award winner.

Spurred by political unrest in Thatcher’s Britain, the Black Audio Film Collective’s experimental cinema challenges form and culture to dismantle stereotype.

Winner of two Locarno Leopards of Tomorrow awards, this stunning portrait of adolescent abandon unfolds at the threshold of emerging maturity.

In this timely and electric Un Certain Regard–premiering drama, a family must contend with the distressing prospect of being separated by immigration officials.

Military rule fuses with ultra-modern digital technologies to open up an ethereal portal that transcends time.

Commissioned by Chunky Move, this playfully experimental work traverses ritual, body modification and algorithms.

Roam through Soviet ruins in this poetic dissection of a crumbled past and an always forward-looking future.

A couple’s date at a tucked-away hole-in-the-wall takes a turn for the ravenous.

Hot Docs award winner Todd Chandler examines disturbing evolutions in today’s USA, where schools operate in the shadow of mass shootings.

Claudie seeks advice from an old flame as a new love is born from the embers.

This ode to sport and friendship takes us to the world’s largest Syrian refugee camp, where two soccer-obsessed teens see the game as their way out.

This complex, evocative period piece about human disconnection invites you to a party in 1990s Belgrade – Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles costume optional.

At the height of the ‘video nasty’ era, a tightly wound film censor begins to unravel in this clever and subversive ode to the genre.

A unique melding of biopic and biographical documentary, this 90s classic – sumptuously restored in time for its 30th anniversary – pays tribute to a vanished era of cinema.

This uplifting feast of a film goes behind the scenes of an Italian hotel-restaurant staffed by youngsters living with Down syndrome.

A long-lost masterpiece of 1970s Iranian cinema finally re-emerges on the big screen.

This 1933 French realist classic is a humane and subversive exploration of child poverty, the limits of schooling and the sanctuary offered by love.

Veteran filmmaker Frederick Wiseman offers a fascinating longform insight into the dramas, frustrations and triumphs of local government.

A sweet, touchingly funny tale about a working-class teen whose newfound passion for singing helps her connect with her deaf family in new ways.

Food lovers won’t be able to resist this tantalising story of a master ramen chef and his legendary Tokyo noodle shop.

A striking work of mood and atmosphere from one of Thailand’s most daring formalist filmmakers.

For one family, a wholesome trip to New Zealand’s remote countryside turns into the stuff of nightmares.

Winner of a Silver Bear at the Berlinale, this genre-bender takes an immersive, existential ride deep inside the Mexico City police force.

Festival favourite Andrea Arnold gets up close and personal with a dairy cow to unveil a surprising and unknown world.

Isolated and maligned by her peers, a woodworker crafts a more assured self-image.

The intricacies of a moment of connection are dwelt on in this meditative examination of male desire by Tsai Ming-liang.

A Soviet official finds her loyalty to the regime tested when her daughter goes missing in the aftermath of a massacre.

A wild, experimental provocation, this black-and-white film features charismatic director Jackie Raynal in an assemblage of unconnected, often-repeating scenes.

Legendary American lesbian feminist filmmaker Barbara Hammer turns her lens to the inner workings of Japanese filmmaking collective Ogawa Productions.

Feminism, media interrogation, relationships and exploratory art practices are showcased in this series spanning two continents and five decades.

Two Fijian-Indian sisters escape their cousin’s wedding to get high on disobedience and drugs.

Ryūsuke Hamaguchi returns with another enigmatically melancholy tale of human desire, loneliness and love – one that nabbed Cannes’ Best Screenplay award.

Leah Purcell AM writes, directs and stars in this highly anticipated adaptation – a vivid reckoning with Australia’s colonial history through the tale of one woman’s resilience.

A hypnotic portrait of a young couple surviving life in an off-the-beaten-track, opportunity-starved outback town.

An absurdist study of the human body as a limitless instrument for self-discovery.

IFFR Tiger Award winner Daïchi Saïto presents an absorbing, otherworldly study of our planet.

In a nondescript place, seemingly forgotten by time, a teenager tries to outrun his loneliness.

This hypnotic exploration of a family’s psychological turmoil under the shadow of Thai history won the FIPRESCI Prize in this year’s IFFR competition.

A real-life mother–daughter duo play a semi-fictional mother–daughter duo struggling to make ends meet in this charismatic feminist class comedy.

In this coming-of-age tale, which won Venice’s Orizzonti Award for Best Short Film, a Colombian 15-year-old born into privilege experiences a rude awakening.

Contemporary Europe, Jewish identity and the legacy of the Holocaust form a bubbling cauldron in this intergenerational triptych.

An elegant, neorealist debut that captures the beating heart of Lagos in the stories of two local dreamers struggling with their city’s Kafkaesque capitalism.

In an Ethiopian community dependent on its cash crop in more ways than one, a new generation’s furtive hopes slip through the cracks.

The directorial debut from producer Tanith Glynn-Maloney reimagines the 1954 auditions for Charles Chauvel’s iconic final film.

A Bruce Lee martial-arts classic gets an Indigenous twist as the first feature film ever to be fully dubbed in an Aboriginal Australian language.

This award-winning, stylistically bold documentary tells the story of an Afghan refugee’s coming home – and coming out – via animation and archival footage.

Come face-to-face with the mysterious force that both surrounds us yet remains beyond our reach or comprehension.

Enter the mind of the world’s greatest con man – and get that dough.

This riveting firsthand account tells the story behind the legendary band that helped inspire the alternative rock sound of the 90s.

Olivia Martin McGuire parallels a grandfather’s journey to safety during the Cultural Revolution with his granddaughter’s fight for freedom in Hong Kong today.

This Gen Z Before Sunrise finds tender romance in youthful self-discovery.

The drift of twentysomething life comes under the lens in this celebrated Aussie slacker satire.

Mytho-pagan eco horror meets fungi-infused body horror in the primordial South African jungle.

Step into a referee’s boots and onto the field to soak up the ecstasy and thrilling stakes of a soccer match.

This true story of an acid attack survivor’s fight to alter her daughter’s destiny is an inspiring and heartwarming call-to-action.

Slow-cinema master Lav Diaz returns with another mordantly meditative piece – one that nabbed him Venice’s Orizzonti Best Director gong.

MIFF alumnus and Shorts Award winner Eddy Bell returns with an intimate and critical portrait of one of Australia’s worst droughts.

Subtitled A Very Human Tech Doc, this timely documentary exposes the true cost of the gig economy quietly powering our everyday lives.

An intricate psychological ode to simmering emotion amid unfettered separation anxiety, which took home two Encounters awards at the Berlinale.

A guided tour through art history as seen through the female gaze – and a savvy, subversive rejoinder to centuries of representation from the eyes of the male beholder.

Divorced, lonely and inept with the web, a 50-year-old man decides to try his hand at finding love online – with spectacularly catastrophic results.

Remembrance blooms in this New York Film Festival–premiering avant-garde short.

In a world with extremes of gravity, Rosa must navigate what it means to feel emotional ups and downs.

A man’s devotion to his wife is put to the ultimate test in this rare cinematic venture into the Horn of Africa.

In this achingly romantic postwar-set film, which won the Un Certain Regard Jury Prize, a man imprisoned for his sexuality finds that love offers sweet release.

Archival footage and media portrayal of violent civil disturbances in Birmingham are used to explore a broader picture of the Black experience in postwar Britain.

Shot on cold-hued 16mm, this mournful, restless ode to Hong Kong sketches the city’s fragile present and indefinite future.

Presented by Sir Ian McKellen and co–executive-produced by Elton John, this unflinching portrait reveals a human rights activist at once revered and notorious.

Garage-rock faves The Murlocs perform their own reimagined live score to Two Hands, Gregor Jordan’s crime caper starring a breakout Heath Ledger and Rose Byrne.

Misogynist or champion of women? This expansive portrait of a controversial fashion icon captures both light and shade.

The new film from dual Oscar winner Asghar Farhadi, which took home Cannes 2021’s Grand Prix, is a tale of redemption, veneration and modern morality.

Winning a Special Mention at CPH:DOX, this moving, poignant film is a love letter to a deaf and blind brother from his younger sister.

The bold directorial debut of Portrait of a Lady on Fire actor Luàna Bajrami is a luminously kinetic depiction of teenage ennui and troublemaking.

Selected for Cannes’ Directors’ Fortnight, the debut feature by Jafar Panahi’s son Panah is a chaotic, tender road trip set against a rugged landscape.

Attempting to quell some tension, a mother and daughter head to the hot springs… but more heat isn’t what they need.

A satirical, modern-day David-and-Goliath tale that presents a persuasive case for citizens’ responsibility to fight for the future.

Prepare to be astounded as this quacktacular Marvel Comics oddity gets plucked from the depths of history for a glorious 70mm screening.

Tilda Swinton sets the screen ablaze in Pedro Almodóvar’s expressionistic, dangerously dramatic English-language debut.

Cannes’ 2020 Short Film Palme d’Or winner depicts the lengths a young man goes to in a bid to see his girlfriend one last time.

Kevin Jerome Everson’s camera dances with a rollerskater in this mesmerising exercise in fluidity and embeddedness.

Meet Australia’s self-crowned “Queen of Honky-Tonk”: renegade country singer Wanita was born ready.

A collective springs to life in this radiant tribute to radical Black politics.

In a forest in England, Ben Wheatley builds the folk horror of your most feverish pandemic nightmares.

Connection is at the heart of Hong Sang-soo’s charming yet deceptively complex multiple-character study.

Moment and memory blend as you bear witness to a Samoan rite of passage.

Yugantar’s most well-known film is a collaboration with the Hyderabad-based feminist activist collective Stree Shakti Sanghatana and an urgent treatise on domestic violence.

The campaign to free Julian Assange takes on intimate dimensions in this documentary portrait of an elderly man’s fight to save his son.

Constance Wu stars in this elegiac Hawaiian drama as the late wife of a man haunted by his past and slowly becoming a spectre in the present.

Ahead of her 100th birthday, Isey and her devoted son James prepare for the party of a lifetime.

Melbourne has never looked sleeker than in this low-key mumblecore piece.

Oliver Stone knows who really killed the president. Now, his new documentary sets out to convince you.

A young woman awakens to find herself in the midst of a living nightmare.

Essie Davis is incandescent as a squeegee-wielding mama bear who won’t stop fighting for those she loves – even if it ruins her own life.

An engrossing profile of a little-known 60s blues and folk icon, executive-produced by Wim Wenders.

Award-winning filmmaker Eddie Martin revisits the cultural landscape of Larry Clark’s iconic 90s film, which paved a bumpy path for its young stars’ future success.

Prayers by day, dreams by night – a mother keeps her son safe.

This illustriously produced vigilante drama centres on a mother who will do anything to get her kidnapped daughter back.

Weave your way through the bustling streets and idyllic beaches of Lagos.

Ken Russell’s wild mash-up of Anglo-Saxon folklore and Bram Stoker’s final novel pits a baby-faced Hugh Grant and Peter Capaldi against a vampiric snake goddess.

Noomi Rapace stars in this Un Certain Regard prize-winning supernatural drama about a couple who raise a very special child.

Co-writers Mark Duplass and Natalie Morales depict a modern-age bond in this touching SXSW Audience Award–winning film, told entirely across screens.

Two estranged friends stumble upon each other and reconnect over a shared loss.

Ema star Mariana Di Girólamo is magnetically front and centre – literally – as a dangerous wannabe social media influencer in this dark drama.

A book group of Proust superfans elevate the art of collective reading and sharing to delightful new heights.

A Palestinian man’s relationship with his homeland is put to the test in this Un Certain Regard–premiering film from the award-winning director of The Band’s Visit.

Selected for Critics’ Week at Cannes, Spanish filmmaker Clara Roquet’s coming-of-age debut captures female desire and friendship on the lush coast of Catalonia.

Produced by Wang Yang and Palme d’Or winner Qiu Yang, Lili Alone is a beautifully mournful story about one woman’s sacrifice.

This story of a Syrian refugee awaiting resettlement on a remote Scottish island is at once heart-wrenching and humorous.

As humans shoot for the stars, what do we lose along the way?

Co-written by Christos Tsiolkas, this period drama depicts a newly-single father’s efforts to weather the turbulence of change – in his life and in the world around him.

In the 2021 Sundance Short Film Grand Jury Prize winner, a young girl stumbles upon secrets at her local church in Lagos.

In a near-future Melbourne defined by state corruption and constant surveillance, a group of small-time activists hatches a plan to commit a “victimless atrocity”.

An engrossing portrait of the rise and untimely demise of David McComb, the virtuosic frontman of Australian rock band The Triffids.

Vanessa Paradis, François Damiens and Valeria Bruni Tedeschi lead this charming, lovestruck comedy set in a port of northern France.

A lead turn reminiscent of Marlon Brando anchors this neo-realist look at the Maltese fishing industry.

Poised at the intersection of activism and art, wunderkind Fox Maxy’s TikTok-esque tapestry documents the injustice and legacy of colonisation.

Emma Dante adapts her own acclaimed play: a melancholy tale of five Sicilian sisters whose lives are forever changed by a trauma from their youth.

In this Brazilian Gothic cri de coeur, the murder of a trans woman reverberates in the lives of the people around her.

Over a hundred years since the publication of the sociological text, La mala vida en Madrid, that coined the term in Spain, what does it mean to be a ‘lowlife’?

Yugantar focuses on female labour rights in Maid Servant (Molkarin, 1981), which features domestic workers in Pune.

Göteborg’s 2021 Ingmar Bergman International Debut Award winner dives into personal memories that embody the persistence of life in the face of enormous tragedy.

Stunningly restored in 4K, the sagacious second feature from Senegalese author turned filmmaker Ousmane Sembène cements his legacy as the ‘father of African film’.

An elderly woman and her nephew wax nostalgic in this charming ode to times gone by.

Les Insoumuses tackle the French media’s sexism by taking playful aim at a misogynistic episode of a popular TV program hosted by Bernard Pivot.

Apichatpong Weerasethakul returns with this hotly anticipated English-language collaboration with Tilda Swinton, which won the 2021 Cannes Jury Prize.

A mysterious package reopens old wounds and breaks down walls of intergenerational silence in this drama about mothers and daughters, history and time.

On a slag heap that once belonged to a coalmine, revellers seek erotic gratification.

The “Black Woodstock” of 1969, which was filmed but never seen, finally makes it to the big screen in this Sundance US Documentary Grand Jury Prize winner.

Co-writers Mark Duplass and Natalie Morales depict a modern-age bond in this touching SXSW Audience Award–winning film, told entirely across screens.

Leah Purcell AM writes, directs and stars in this highly anticipated adaptation – a vivid reckoning with Australia’s colonial history through the tale of one woman’s resilience.

Jason Di Rosso speaks to three directors whose intimate films, screening at MIFF 69, each shine a light on their own families – and therefore themselves.

Four documentarians discuss their MIFF 69 films that spotlight individuals who have carved out influential careers amid personal and professional struggles.

A panel of Iranian directors spotlighted in MIFF 69’s New Iranian Cinema strand delve into their work and the rise of filmmaking in this region.

A panel of filmmakers, academics and activists explore one of the prevalent documentary themes in this year’s festival: queer activism.

This bruising, tender queer drama reminiscent of Beau Travail explores homophobia and repressed desire in the Apartheid-era South African military.

Dash Snow epitomised “live fast, die young”, ascending from New York’s fringe to the major international art scene during his brief existence.

This timely, intelligent and emotional examination of state-sanctioned violence reveals a disturbingly universal story.

In Jacqueline Lentzou’s exceptional feature debut, an already strained father–daughter relationship is put under pressure.

An unsettling, melancholic portrait of what fame did to the talented young star of Death in Venice.

This sprawling, tender documentary captures the inspiring relationship between an unorthodox German schoolteacher and his culturally diverse teenage class.

A 2020 large-scale participatory-dance work choreographed by the acclaimed Stephanie Lake expresses the inexpressible in lockdown.

Before Thurgood Marshall, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Rosa Parks, there was Pauli Murray. Remember their name.

Two brothers with diametrically opposed approaches to their faith are pitted against one another in this tense family drama.

A timber feller, kept awake by his infant child’s cries of hunger, encounters something perturbing in the woods.

Routine is the only thing keeping Nestor afloat.

You’re in excellent hands with this wicked class satire about a very special immigrant masseur and the affluent individuals who grow besotted with him.

Winner of the Silver Lion at the 2020 Venice Film Festival, this shocking, dystopian thriller is an incendiary indictment of class, racism and power that speaks to our times.

Michael Beets depicts an elderly woman enacting the titular Japanese death ritual for her husband.

Rachel Perkins’ affecting Aussie classic sees three estranged sisters reluctantly reunite for their mother’s funeral and grapple with long-suppressed family secrets.

The first Iran–US co-production to open in Iranian cinemas since the revolution pits a couple against a malevolent hotel, trapping them in with their secrets.

A young prison inmate is transformed into a modern-day Scheherazade in this electrifying tribute to the power of storytelling.

Dive into this erotic, sensorial experience that transforms spoken word into audiovisual landscapes.

In this multi-award-winning drama, a child pickpocket dreams of a better life.

A twentysomething has to grapple with the pressures of impending maturity as well as the ‘ninjababy’ that has snuck inside her seemingly undetected.

When the Victorian Government locks down his public-housing building, a teenager responsible for his mother’s welfare is pushed to the brink.

A narrative depiction of the events leading up to one of the darkest chapters in modern Australian history from MIFF Accelerator Lab alumnus director Justin Kurzel.

“It is as if Chantal Akerman, perhaps for the first time in her career, has revealed the core of her work and her wounds in the most naked of ways.” – Cinema Scope

Maliciously outed after his death, musician Billy Tipton is now a transmasculine icon.

Part road movie, part video essay, this lyrical tour-de-force from Angelo Madsen Minax finds catharsis in confronting family drama.

Steven Soderbergh assembles the starriest of casts, headlined by Don Cheadle and Benicio Del Toro, for this explosive period crime caper.

An uplifting, flower shop–set meet-cute between an apprentice florist and the customer of his dreams.

From the director of Golden Bear winner Fire at Sea comes an achingly poetic, humane meditation on life in the shadow of war and the Islamic State.

Carrie Brownstein and St. Vincent play versions of themselves in this music mockumentary that explores the absurdities of fame and friendship.

The lives of Indigenous women collide in this powerful feature debut, which takes aim at poverty, prejudice and the patriarchy.

Loneliness is operatic in the latest film by Renee Zhan.

Indigenous teenagers navigate exams, social dramas and maintaining meaningful connections to home while at boarding school.

Join a demon, a puppy and a rat in this stop-motion headtrip about a mysterious, magically summoned apple tree.

In the age of information overload, the challenge is to avoid drowning.

This winner of multiple Czech Lion awards as well as Venice’s UNICEF Award is a stunning, utterly harrowing indictment of humanity at its worst.

Melbourne’s iconic baroque homewares mogul, Franco Cozzo, is the subject of this delightful portrait that offers insights into furniture, family and the migrant experience.

A short-sighted boy uncovers family secrets in an intricate, Tim Burton–esque world.

Three elderly survivors of the 1945 firebombing of Tokyo fight against bureaucracy and indifference to ensure that the event and its victims are not forgotten.

Awarded IFFR’s top prize, this lean, arresting debut follows a primal father–son road trip across the arid landscapes of southern India.

Céline Sciamma returns with a delicate tale of childhood and an intergenerational connection that crosses through time.

Be swept away by renowned Chilean composer Claudio Recabarren Madrid’s cosmic keys.

Capturing the malaise of Chinese society at the tail end of the 20th century, Jia Zhang-ke’s restored feature debut is ripe for re-examination.

Nicolas Cage is back with the perfect film for his skill set: a revenge thriller centred on a stolen truffle pig, but with a sober tone that showcases the Oscar winner of yore.

In this delightful slacker story, a young Parisian comic-book artist is on the hunt for stability, a career, self-confidence, love – but nothing seems to go her way.

Göteborg’s Best Feature Film winner fearlessly dissects the contemporary porn industry through the perspective of a young woman determined to be a star.

Stuck in a holding pattern, two men attempt to break the cycle.

Naina Sen explores the relationship between biracial identity and generational belonging through traditional Balinese dance.

A daughter explores her mother’s complex punk legacy in this no-holds-barred documentary.

This adaptation of Jennifer Clement’s bestselling novel explores the visceral impact of Mexican drug cartels on the lives of three young girls.

An exquisitely shot insight into dance, dramaturgy and performance featuring dancer Michelle Heaven.

Love and reality go under the scalpel in this story of obsession on the streets of Budapest.

This tense and timely docu-thriller, which won a Sundance award for vérité filmmaking, plunges into the chaos of Zimbabwe’s first democratic elections.

A Lynchian depiction of self-transformation in the social media age.

Undead bikies, wealthy witches, Satanic butlers and magic frogs. What more could you want from a cult post-Hammer horror?

This gutsy and charming film about a young Ghanaian-American woman at a crossroads marks the arrival of a filmmaker with a fresh, unique vision.

Nominated for Best International Feature Film at this year’s Oscars, this extraordinary account of a 1995 Bosnian massacre is powerful, essential viewing.

A deeply personal portrait becomes a reflection on Iran’s turbulent political history in this striking, formally innovative memoir.

This Sundance 2020 Audience Award winner is a revelatory, immersive adaptation of Naoki Higashida’s memoir of a neurodiverse life.

A troubled medical scholar pits herself against institutional sexism in this steely moral thriller selected for Un Certain Regard.

You always have to watch out for those early warning signs.

Mads Mikkelsen headlines this ingenious, pitch-black Scandi revenge comedy.

A teenager is faced with the choice between rising up to become the better man or debasing himself for acceptance.

From mountain high to river deep, director Jennifer Peedom follows her 2017 MIFF hit Mountain with a stunning new cine-sonic journey along the world’s waterways.

An intimate portrait of the life and death of beloved globe-trotting television presenter Anthony Bourdain from the Oscar-winning director of 20 Feet from Stardom.

Erupting with unforgettable images of Hawaii, this boundary-breaking essay film captures the splendour and turbulent colonial history of the island nation.

This unsettling chamber piece, while wearing the skin of a horror, is at heart a considered meditation on selflessness, loyalty and chronic illness.

This daring Sundance Directing Award winner tracks a band of volunteers out to rescue ISIS sex slaves from an infamous Syrian border camp.

Ogawa Productions’ first internationally successful film captures farmers in Sanrizuka, Japan, resisting a government takeover of their land.

Horrific real-world news story becomes giallo-inspired horror in this gleefully deranged interrogation of our conspiracy-fuelled, edgelord-filled times.

In the ruthless world of competitive table-setting, it’s knives at 20 places.

Dramatic re-enactments, interviews and testimonies traverse and illuminate the life and death of Black American revolutionary Malcolm X.

Laurie Anderson narrates the untold history of the women who blazed a trail through electronic music.

An intimidating encounter with a group of teens forces a 12-year-old to ponder her place in the world.

Laura Dern is unforgettable in this 1986 Sundance Grand Jury Prize winner – now digitally restored – as a teen who pursues experiences she’s not really sure she wants.

Denis Côté’s witty, theatrical battle of the sexes turns social distancing into an exercise in mutual estrangement.

Tradition and technology meet head-on in this tense coming-of-age drama about two Egyptian teens and a web of deceptions.

This ultra-gory animated fantasy is a chaotic ride perfectly calibrated for your inner 1980s teenage dirtbag.

A meditative guide through the Azores archipelago’s history and its inhabitants’ connection to the volatile land.

This DOK Leipzig Silver Dove for Short Documentary and Animated Film winner grapples with China’s one-child policy through a story about two friends.

Jillian Nguyen and Mark Coles Smith star as a Chinese erotic dancer and an Aboriginal farmhand in this 1920s period drama.

Hot Docs 2020’s Best International Feature Documentary winner offers a dog’s-eye view of life in Istanbul.

Co-executive-produced by Ian Thorpe, this sports drama centres on a teenager fighting to stay afloat in the world of competitive swimming – and in his family life.

Sweep the clouds away with this joyous origin story of your favourite childhood TV show.

When a new arrival is alienated by her peers at a girls’ orphanage, she exacts revenge by inventing an activity that takes gameplay to the extreme.

The “Black Woodstock” of 1969, which was filmed but never seen, finally makes it to the big screen in this Sundance US Documentary Grand Jury Prize winner.

Zoe Terakes and Brenna Harding star as best friends mutually overcoming a tragedy.

A gang of streets kids is hired to pull off a dangerous heist in this Oscar-shortlisted coming-of-age drama from Iranian master director Majid Majidi.

A middle-aged woman cares for her elderly father, whose will to live is on the wane.

Be swept up by Beethoven, Bernstein and Mahler in this joyous, majestic work.

Like a real-life fairytale, Taming the Garden is the story of an unseen billionaire who ‘steals’ trees in his desire to build his own private Eden.

Questions of morality and duty play out against the backdrop of the Iranian justice system in the 2020 Berlinale’s Golden Bear winner.

This intimately-made film draws on conceptual art and performance documentation to self-reflexively survey Barbara Cleveland’s then-15-year collaborative relationship.

Winner of Best First Appearance at IDFA 2020, this formally bold documentary traces a Kurdish-Ukrainian young man’s experiences of an endless cycle of war and peace.

Siegfried A. Fruhauf returns with a dazzlingly abstracted Rorschach-like lightshow.

A screen experience like no other, this is the first ever live documentary filmed by refugees from around the world – edited and scored live on stage.

From Palme d’Or winner Nanni Moretti comes this highly anticipated new drama of disparate lives in an Italian apartment complex.

Buckle up for the wildest, queerest car-fetish body-horror fable ever to win the Cannes Palme d’Or.

Yugantar focuses on female labour rights in Tobacco Ember (Tambaku Chaakila Oob Ali, 1982), which features factory workers in Nipani.

This cinematic insight into the craft of a taxidermist illuminates the relationship between artist and animal.

Rising alt-comedy star Patti Harrison joins Ed Helms in this wry surrogate-pregnancy comedy that upends traditional gender dynamics and subverts expectations.

Newly discovered archival footage provides a time capsule into the making of Tom Petty’s iconic 1994 album Wildflowers, revealing an artist at a career crossroads.

A tense mother–daughter survival story that paints an empathetic picture of outsider life across the subways and streets of New York City.

After her father unexpectedly hits her, a young girl decides to toughen up.

Peter Tscherkassky pays homage to avant-garde filmmaker Kurt Kren, his own film L’arrivée and the cinema’s original muse in this Cannes Directors’ Fortnight selection.

The darkly humorous 2021 Clermont-Ferrand International Competition Special Jury Prize winner pits a funeral custom against languishing olive trees.

A family unravels while road-tripping near Death Valley in the California desert.

Both a “lockdown journal” and a piece of fiction, this collaboration between Portuguese auteurs pushes the limits between truth and tale.

A Sydney magician devises a stunt to disappear Uluru, but is his dream of making it big as illusory as his planned vanishing act?

Winner of the 2021 Prix Un Certain Regard at Cannes, this Russian drama from the producers of Beanpole travels to the dark heart of an unusual family.

Go behind the music at the sunny Caribbean studio that birthed some of the biggest hits of the 1980s.

Christian Petzold’s reimagining of an ancient myth will pull you in with its shadowy undertow.

A French couple travelling by campervan around Australia discover their relationship is at a crossroads.

Starring Pamela Rabe, Margot Nash’s acclaimed first feature – now gloriously restored – is a must for the big screen.

Dianna Barrie and Richard Tuohy present a lo-fi 3D film captured in the crushing shadow of volcanoes.

Bill Morrison revisits lesser-known chapters of Soviet film history in this hypnotic fever dream that melds art and archive.

Abbas Kiarostami protégé Ahmad Bahrami’s 2020 Venice Orizzonti Award winner is a dreamlike expedition to a remote Iranian factory.

How do you get the world’s biggest rock band to play in your hometown? Become the world’s biggest rock band.

This Berlinale FIPRESCI Prize winner is a romantic, Kafkaesque fable full of poignant whimsy and playful imagery.

Japanese favourite Ryūsuke Hamaguchi enchants with a playfully enigmatic, female-centric triptych that won the Silver Bear Grand Jury Prize at this year’s Berlinale.

On the streets of Kabul, a child dreams of making it big. Will a chance encounter with a foreigner bring his shot at stardom closer?

Kiyoshi Kurosawa makes his first foray into period filmmaking with a twisty, Hitchcockian tale of love and betrayal in WWII, which earned him a 2020 Silver Lion.

A Noongar high school student struggles to perform a Shakespearean sonnet for her drama class.

Undead bikies, Satanic butlers, magic frogs, an ancient vampiric snake goddess. What more could you want from a cult folk-horror double feature?

A ruminative film on the interplay between bovine lives and human consumption.

Artist, outsider, writer, queer activist. David Wojnarowicz was all of these things and more, as Chris McKim captures in his fiery documentary.

Just your ordinary story of a girl who falls in love with a wolfman and raises their children – this anime classic celebrates difference and unconventional families.

From race to religion, flesh to nature, this comprehensive documentary explores how cinema exhumes the old traumas that modernity tries to bury.

The first feature documentary made by queer filmmakers about queer life – by the Mariposa Film Group – captures an essential moment in the gay liberation movement.

Joachim Trier’s latest – winner of Best Actress at Cannes – is an elegant, playful character study about a young woman’s existential crisis.

Jafar Panahi, Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Laura Poitras and other global cinema heavyweights reflect on 2020 in this sweeping anthology film for the COVID age.

On the cusp of turning 10, a Jamaican girl is about to learn how not to drown.

Yael Stone and Emily Barclay star as frenemy sisters in this sibling dramedy by Madeleine Gottlieb.

Winner of Best Short Film at the Swiss Film Awards, this documentary observes the impact of time – and historical trauma – on one commemorative street.

Digitally restored in 2019, three pioneering works by the Yugantar Film Collective offer a rare insight into the active women’s movements across 1980s India.

An infamous tweetstorm about a wild, pole-dancing Florida road trip has become one of the most hotly anticipated movies of the year.