This Venice prize winner captures the challenges of motherhood as experienced by a Ukrainian prison’s female inmates, separated from their children.

In this tense thriller direct from Cannes, affluence offers no security as a woman wakes up to the dangerous realities of life in Pinochet’s Chile.

A forgotten landmark in Australian cinema, directed by a pre–Alvin Purple Tim Burstall, returns to the big screen at last.

The first film directed by a woman to win the Berlinale’s top prize saw Márta Mészáros fêted as a master chronicler of the female experience.

Acclaimed Polish documentarian Paweł Łoziński finds wonder and wisdom in the everyday from two floors up.

Sari Braithwaite’s delightfully intimate new feature invites us to share the mundane and the magnificent with a neurodivergent, working-class family.

A refreshingly original, sci-fi-tinged tale of gender, reproduction, normativity and family that follows two couples struggling with infertility.

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

A tailor wrestles with his sexuality in this deeply felt film about the many forms that love can take within and outside a marriage.

Hong Kong has long been an epicentre of activism. This film uses the prism of generational change to shed light on its ongoing fight for its future.

A multilayered drama spotlighting the brutal world of labour in Mexico’s industrial borderlands through the eyes of a boy searching for his father.

Desperate to escape the alienation of post-revolution Egypt, a young woman secretly arranges to flee Cairo for Berlin.

An exciting American director transforms an ordinary childhood into something sublime – and even sacred.

A delicately handled documentary portrait of a sparky teen girl torn between her community’s traditions and an independent future.

A powerful documentary about the life and cultural impact of tennis icon Arthur Ashe, the first Black athlete to win a Grand Slam singles title.

Before the Australian New Wave, there was Giorgio Mangiamele – and this 1965 award-winning film is a testament to the Italian-born director’s talents.

Star-crossed teens meet across time, space and ancient myth in this romantically ravishing journey through the cosmic cycle of life and death.

A family escapes toxic Beirut for the idyllic countryside in this heartfelt, politically charged debut set in a near-future Lebanon.

This surreal, offbeat fable of environmental destruction and familial reconciliation defies audience expectations at every turn.

This dazzling, Locarno award-winning experimental work explores the interiority of a mind in which pain takes the form of a creature.

Viggo Mortensen, Kristen Stewart and Léa Seydoux star in David Cronenberg’s body-horror set in a future where humans are evolving in unexpected ways.

Mixing realism and myth, this award-winning film uses a unique animation style to tell the story of two war-torn siblings with beauty, light and hope.

Discover a masterpiece of Japanese cinema from one of the pioneers of the postwar period, a fantastic kabuki fable now magnificently restored.

The improbable tale of the irreverent subredditors who took on Wall Street at the height of the pandemic – and caused a financial sensation.

In this Cannes-premiering drama, a widower resists attempts to oust him from the land where his wife’s spirit returns to him as an ethereal mist.

An independent woman assesses her future in this musical time capsule of the spirit of change sweeping Eastern Europe at the end of the 60s.

The winner of Rotterdam’s Tiger Award melds magic realism, mythology, ecology and ethnography into an exquisite cine-poem.

Filled with fun and joy, this vital documentary shows kids how to move, nourish, respect and embrace their bodies.

Combining modern science with ancient First Nations knowledge, this documentary seeks new ways of thinking about the many crises facing our planet.

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

Women’s liberation gets the high-stakes treatment in this slick Kurdish thriller about two sisters swindling their way to academic success.

Romain Duris and Bérénice Bejo star in Cannes’s Opening Night film: a gory, goofy remake of Shin’ichirō Ueda’s cult zombie comedy One Cut of the Dead.

Eddie Martin puts viewers on the frontlines of the 2019–2020 bushfires, capturing the catastrophe with a perspective and scale never before seen.

Culinary indulgence is more aural than oral in Peter Strickland’s new foray into fanciful fetish, which gives new meaning to ‘playing with your food’.

Culinary tradition clashes with political sanctions in award-winning Palestinian artist Jumana Manna’s contemplative third feature.

She gamed a transphobic medical system – and now this hybrid documentary about trans identity gets playful in telling her community’s stories.

A young Tasmanian activist follows in the literal footsteps of his late father, who in the 80s fought to save the pristine Franklin River wilderness.

Three of Italy’s finest filmmakers take to the road to craft a humanistic portrait of the country today, as seen through the eyes of its youth.

Questioning their gender identity, a young person shares a transformative night out with a stranger in this experiment with form and perspective.

Strange things are afoot at the opera as Angel, a countertenor, and his twin brother prepare for an audition that will change their lives.

It’s David vs. Goliath in the Aussie outback in this profoundly topical documentary of an independent upstart battling the political establishment.

A portrait of one woman’s quest to preserve a unique landscape in the face of ecological devastation and the limits of her solitary existence.

A song-and-dance star is ready for her big TV break … but there’s a demonic presence waiting in the wings.

An extraordinary cinematic experience, this award-winning, dialogue-free film examines heritage and cultural identity in the face of modernisation.

In this funny, funky and surreal hand-drawn animation, Jérôme arrives in heaven in search of his late wife.

MIFF Accelerator Lab alumna Domini Marshall (Slap) delivers an affecting exploration of victim-survivor trauma.

A vivid and empathetic inside look at one of Naples’ toughest neighbourhoods, where one boy finds his dreams threatened by a dark legacy.

The debut feature from Jafar Panahi’s son Panah – a 2021 Directors’ Fortnight title – is a chaotic, tender road trip set against a rugged landscape.

In this polemical Iranian noir, an intrepid female journalist hunts down a serial killer who believes he’s doing Allah’s work.

Arthouse giant Guy Maddin (The Green Fog, My Winnipeg) voices a talking horse in this surreal comedy-horror.

A young woman must face the trauma of her childhood while spending an evening alone with her terminally ill father.

This Sundance winner offers a timely, immersive glimpse at the lives of Ukrainian children near the frontlines of the pre-invasion war with Russia.

Beanie Feldstein, Steven Yeun, Richard Jenkins and Amy Schumer star in an ensemble drama about a family lunch that gets an existentialist horror spin.

This powerful act of collective cultural memory mixes archival footage, stills and recollections to summon the ghosts of the Iranian Revolution.

Winner of Sundance’s US Documentary Directing Award, this formidable, deeply personal piece of filmmaking inhabits the perspective of disability.

Three of the Australia’s most insightful filmmakers – Alena Lodkina, Goran Stolevski and Thomas M. Wright – discuss their Gala and Competition Films.

French fabulist Quentin Dupieux returns with a goofball comedy involving time travel, the pandemic and one man’s robotic penis.

In this underseen gem of the Australian New Wave, a young man drives a 1938 Buick from Melbourne to Sydney – and towards his future.

The Killing of Two Lovers director Robert Machoian returns with a slow-burning study of performative masculinity and its associated dangers.

Remarkable short-form favourites from Cannes, Sundance and Berlin.

An award-packed cornucopia from directors known and new.

In this fresh Filipino vision of the end of the world, a young woman confronts the terrors of her childhood home as frogs pour down from the sky.

Charlotte Gainsbourg makes her directorial debut with this tender, quietly revelatory portrait of her mother, Jane Birkin.

Ethan Coen’s solo debut is a canny doc about rock ’n’ roll’s wild-man that will entice both fans of Jerry Lee Lewis and those new to his story.

In this daring and delirious ode to Philippine cinema, fiction clashes with reality and an elderly filmmaker becomes the hero of her own life.

On a hot day in Melbourne’s western suburbs, a young woman paints her nanna’s pergola before the house is auctioned.

In Chad, where religion rules with an iron fist, a teenage girl seeks to end her pregnancy.

An existential mishmash of Spike Milligan and Jacques Tati with an Australian flavour, this is absurdist comedy at its weirdest and most charming.

A revealing (in more ways than one) look at sexually charged gay youth and the connections made in the heat of naked self-discovery.

The ‘modernisation’ of Melbourne in the 50s razed much of the city, including its elegant cinemas. Now, a Melbourne-made doc brings them back to life.

Emma-Kate Croghan’s rom-com about five uni students and their intertwined sexual and academic crises captures the chaos and energy of 1990s Melbourne.

An imaginative, deeply personal story about the tensions that develop between an immigrant mother and a young woman as she prepares to head abroad.

A Male is a distinctly authentic coming-of-age story that doubles as a smart and probing study of the havoc wreaked by toxic masculinity.

Following the election of a far-right president, one Afro-Brazilian family takes stock while its youngest member dreams of outer space.

Two couples come together for a painful emotional reckoning in the aftermath of a school shooting in this acclaimed debut feature.

The first Australian film to win the prestigious Clermont-Ferrand International Grand Prix, Mate is a relentless encounter with self-destruction.

Un Certain Regard’s 2022 Best Screenplay winner is a disarming odd-couple story of middle age, male bonding and mental health in the Middle East.

In first-time feature director Michelle Savill’s anxiety-inducing knockout, a woman misses a flight and digs herself a very deep, very funny hole.

Seeking to emerge from her mother’s shadow, a 12-year-old sabotages the aspiring celebrity’s reality TV audition.

A 10-year-old must keep her grief-stricken immigrant family together in this moving Australian–Slovenian co-production.

An immersive, kaleidoscopic trip through the art and music of iconic shapeshifter David Bowie, with stunningly restored and never-before-seen footage.

A teenage Vince Colosimo makes his film debut in this 1983 coming-of-age tale about an Italian-Australian boy caught between two worlds.

Reflecting on her own culpability, a woman recounts the traumatising assault she witnessed of a young man in a small Australian coastal town.

Hirokazu Kore-eda protégé Ema Kawawada debuts with this heart-rending drama exploring the little-seen world of Kurdish asylum seekers in Japan.

The stirring 2021 winner of Annecy’s Jury Prize explores the intricacies of freedom for women inside post-Taliban Afghanistan.

When strangers appear outside her window and lure her mother away, seven-year-old Sophie follows.

This award-winning, jaw-dropping documentary follows Vladimir Putin’s political rival as he investigates a state-sponsored poisoning: his own.

Winner of the Berlinale’s Teddy Jury Award, this is the true story of two women who survived WWII’s horrors and smashed social taboos to pursue love.

A wildly ambitious, radically experimental Afrofuturist musical that transcends space, time and gender from visionary poet and musician Saul Williams.

Youthful passion and India’s turbulent politics come to life in this lyrical documentary that won the 2021 Cannes Golden Eye award.

A striking performance from Brendan Cowell grounds this unsettling police drama that explores the aftermath of a massacre on a Melbourne train.

Confined to his room in an aged-care facility, an older man in decline struggles with his son’s abrupt departure.

Denise Scott stars alongside her real-life family in this poetic pseudo-documentary.

In this powerfully unsettling examination of consent and predation, which won a Sundance Directing Award, a teenager falls for a man twice her age.

Charlotte Gainsbourg is the essence of Gallic cool in this moody, insouciant film from French dramatist Mikhaël Hers (Amanda).

Two women cross paths one afternoon as they move into and out of an apartment block.

A dark but tender docu-comedy about the eccentric proprietors of Poland’s largest pawnshop – and their absurd idea to save a business lost in time.

For this Sri Lankan immigrant, it’s another day of stacking supermarket shelves – and of cultural misunderstandings.

An idealistic film student is drawn into an enigmatic performance artist’s shadowy world in Alena Lodkina’s follow-up to the acclaimed Strange Colours.

Corporate espionage thriller. Globe-trotting heist caper. Sweet rom-com. True-crime documentary. The Pez Outlaw is all these things and more.

The cruelty of teenage girls is more distressing than the growing pile of bloodied bodies in this ferocious study of the horrors of bullying.

A mermaid struggles with identity in an alienating suburban world without running water.

This disquieting sci-fi drama direct from Cannes envisions a dark path for Japan’s ageing population.

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

From the director of The Search for Weng Weng comes a film as delightfully irreverent as its subject, Fred Negro – “the unofficial mayor of St Kilda”.

In this ghost story for the online age, a man searches for a childhood videogame that might be little more than an urban myth. Is he losing his grip?

Returning to MIFF, this Sundance Audience Award winner is a revelatory, immersive adaptation of Naoki Higashida’s memoir of a neurodiverse life.

Thelonious Monk broke the jazz mould. Here’s what happened when a French TV show tried to stuff him back into it.

The story of a lamb and a boy faced with the challenge of becoming a man.

Explosive action, supernatural horror and subversive politics collide in this Senegalese film about mercenaries marooned in a spooky coastal paradise.

A Chinese delivery driver has his rental bike stolen in this devastating, Bicycle Thieves–esque drama about lives on the edge of poverty.

A Karachi schoolgirl’s world falls apart after she shares a sensual dance video with her virtual boyfriend, who proceeds to blackmail her.

This film from world-renowned ensemble Back to Back wonders whether an AI-led future society will further disenfranchise the disability community.

A couple’s sun-filled sojourn in Italy takes a dark, unexpected turn when their comfortable apathy is tested by the arrival of a migrant worker.

This Instagram influencer doesn’t just have a follower count – she’s got a body count.

Across place and time, lucid dreams reconnect two people who once crossed paths.

MIFF and Orchestra Victoria showcase the film scores that have captured the Victorian landscape and transformed it into imagined pasts and futures.

Easily one of the most brutal and twisted films of the year, Speak No Evil is a merciless horror of manners. You have been warned.

In a post-collapse world, a prisoner cleans an all-white room while a rebel investigates a decaying factory.

Cleverman’s Hunter Djali Yumunu Page-Lochard stars in this gorgeously shot First Nations mystery that tells of ancient spirits inhabiting the land.

Acute Misfortune writer/director Thomas M. Wright returns with a taut crime thriller starring Joel Edgerton and Sean Harris, direct from Cannes.

While staying with her uncle, a girl’s nightmares about a bizarre kitchen appliance manifest into reality.

This Viennale FIPRESCI Prize–winning, quasi-doco picaresque parable wrapped in a mythic western treasure hunt would make Herzog and Pasolini proud.

Following his exploration of male entitlement in Social Hygiene, Denis Côté returns with an intimate look at female sexuality – well, hypersexuality.

Fans of Tilda Swinton and Idris Elba will find their wishes lavishly granted in George Miller’s delirious fable about a lovelorn djinn.

Melbourne Cup meets the Marx Brothers in this 1934 vaudeville romp starring Australian comedian George Wallace as an accident-prone stablehand.

Fresh from Cannes, this provocative short follows a young disabled man whose life is disrupted after an incident during water therapy for his spasms.

A poetic and powerful drama about a Syrian teenager who returns from a long day in the field to discover she’s about to be sold into marriage.

A moving story of two Ghanaian boys haunted by the loss of their older brother.

For one teenager, queer identity collides with familial expectation and the intricacies of the immigrant experience.

As Australia’s housing crisis deepens, this Margot Robbie–narrated film shows us the fastest-growing social group facing homelessness: women over 55.

An elegant, intimate drama of sisterhood and generational conflict that explores the lives of three women on a Tunisian orchard.

An elderly Quecha couple face climate change in this tale of love, survival and tradition at high altitude, which won a Grand Jury Prize at Sundance.

Alice in Wonderland meets Nosferatu in this late masterpiece of the Czech New Wave from Jaromil Jireš (The Safebreaker, Romance).

A mother’s love for her son is tested by his increasingly alarming behaviour.

When a filmmaker son sets out to make a documentary about his filmmaker father, long-buried feelings and dormant memories bubble to the surface.

Gaspar Noé comes for your ageing parents in this pitiless yet emotionally powerful examination of fragile mortality (starring the Dario Argento).

This surprising and transcendent Sundance award-winner stars a gender-defying belly dancer as a crane operator in Beirut.

As her father turns his car into a water pump, a little girl transforms into a force of nature.

The 2022 Cannes Short Film Palme d’Or winner is a hypnotic work that watches with strange wonder as the world ends in the aftermath of an asteroid.

From the ancient past to a dystopian future, this genre-hopping First Nations anthology film challenges colonial myths and celebrates resistance.

Frankie and Charlie regret moving into a tiny home, but a sick cockatiel offers a welcome distraction.

An rare look at life in the Central African Republic as four students are thrown personal and emotional curveballs on their path to a better future.

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

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?

Locarno’s Cinema e Gioventù Prize winner blends drama, absurdity and humour in depicting a Philippine city’s survival in the wake of Typhoon Haiyan.

This unique Gothic vision from an uncompromising Australian filmmaker makes for one of 2022’s best first films.

Toronto’s 2021 Platform Prize winner is a vibrant yet bittersweet portrait of adolescent girlhood colliding with the weight of cultural expectations.