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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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 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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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