Featuring a remarkable lead performance from nine-year-old Sofia Otero, 20,000 Species of Bees is an empathetic exploration of gender and generations.

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

Turkish auteur Nuri Bilge Ceylan (The Wild Pear Tree) presents an ambitious epic of maladjusted male ego.

Lee Kang-sheng brings undeniable star power to this graceful, pensive story of a man trying to find his place in a world that has left him behind.

Siblings can drive us to the edge. This visceral car crash of love and fury revs this American indie vehicle led by Michael Cera.

In Christian Petzold’s Silver Bear–winning drama, a summer getaway on Germany’s Baltic coast unravels against the backdrop of looming wildfires.

James Benning invites us to contemplate Black history as he turns his structuralist lens on the first African American municipality in California.

Love seeps through the cracks in this touching tale of same-sex desire in metropolitan Nigeria, which won the Berlinale’s Teddy Award.

From Cannes Critics’ Week comes a heartbreaking and unforgettably tender portrait of a six-year-old French girl’s bond with her Cape Verdean nanny.

Bristling with emotional depth, this Palme d’Or–winning courtroom drama puts the complexities of a relationship on trial.

A mix of sci-fi genre-bending and apocalyptic tension, this debut uses an alien invasion to peer across the stakes of faith and family in Morocco.

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

Auteurs Jia Zhang-ke and Bi Gan join the voice cast for this acerbic animated wonder about Chinese art students facing a rapidly changing world.

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

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.

In this chilling political coming-of-age film, a young housekeeper is drawn into the sinister orbit of his influential boss.

Jennifer Connelly and Ben Whishaw star in this blackly comic debut about an ex–child star who attends a spiritual retreat in search of enlightenment.

Franco-Senegalese director Ramata-Toulaye Sy’s first longform work is a haunting fable of star-cross’d lovers set in a rural village.

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

Spoiler alert: humanity destroyed itself. How will the last two men standing ensure the survival of the species?

A bachelor party takes a feral turn in this genre-defying debut from an exciting new Australian directing duo.

In Dario Argento’s assured and tense debut, an American expat in Rome is entangled in a serial killer’s web.

In this modern reimagining of Frankenstein, the give-and-take of motherhood is tested through a collision of grief, creation and horror.

The genius and hubris of the tech industry collide in this wildly entertaining account of the dramatic rise and fall of the world’s first smartphone.

A charming character study about love, liberty and the pursuit of forbidden fruit, set in the Georgian countryside.

Harvey Keitel stars in this adaptation of Edgar Allan Poe’s tale of obsession and violence, now splendidly restored by Cinecittà.

An enchanting animated take on Haruki Murakami’s short stories starring a gregarious talking frog, an existential bank teller and an elusive cat.

Now magnificently restored, Pedro Costa’s oneiric debut film declared the arrival of an essential new voice in world cinema.

This multi-award-winning debut is an intimate, deeply felt portrait of a lesbian teacher living a double life in Thatcher’s England.

The French New Wave lives on in this luminous, snow-covered Gen Z love triangle from Wet Season and Ilo Ilo director Anthony Chen.

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

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

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.

Do murderous thoughts lurk in our very DNA? Dario Argento interrogates nature vs nurture in his suspenseful second film.

A Brazilian family caring for their ailing patriarch make a diabolical deal to shelter a drug don in this tense, darkly comic thriller.

A ragtag cast and crew of theatre nerds bring extra drama to save their beloved summer camp in this uproarious mockumentary.

In Jessica Hausner’s bold satire, a charismatic teacher convinces her teenage students that disordered eating can produce many kinds of enlightenment.

Parasite’s Song Kang-ho stars as a 1970s filmmaker-in-crisis in this chaotic comedy from the director of I Saw the Devil.

The first ever African film to screen at Cannes, this detailed investigation of village life is a profound meditation on time, memory and community.

A deliriously defiant, all-female reimagining of Conan the Barbarian that’s feted to become a new cult classic.

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

Frederick Wiseman’s third foray into dramatic features centres on Sophia Tolstoy’s complicated marriage to her novelist husband.

Oscar-winning Amy and Senna director Asif Kapadia fuses horror and expressionistic dance in this haunting ballet inspired by Woyzeck and Frankenstein.

Hailed as one of the greatest giallo works ever made, this oneiric fever dream about an amateur sleuth attracted praise from Alfred Hitchcock himself.

Heed the call of the waves and dive headfirst into this innovative and visually resplendent Chinese animation.

In this gently surreal, formally bold Argentinian take on the heist film, two bumbling bandits try to buy their liberty.

In this Cannes Directors’ Fortnight hit, two debt collectors face the absurdity of their jobs while dwarfed by the majestic Moroccan desert.

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

Franz Rogowski propels this mesmeric musing on wounded masculinity, which is ignited by French electro superstar Vitalic’s feverish soundtrack.

If you like Hitchcock, you’ll love Dario Argento’s exhilarating 2005 homage to the Master of Suspense.

Cynthia Erivo and Alia Shawkat shine in the stirring new work from Anthony Chen, which explores how friendship can salve the traumas of the past.

This delicate, absorbing portrait of motherhood follows a young Black woman caught up in a spiral of institutional disadvantage.

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.

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

Tilda Swinton and Tilda Swinton star in Joanna Hogg’s Gothic coda to her two Souvenir films, executive-produced by Martin Scorsese.

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

Slow-cinema auteur Lisandro Alonso and actor Viggo Mortensen reunite for a free-flowing triptych of meditations on colonialism past and present.

In this Kafkaesque comedy for the selfie age, a woman must confront just what makes her identity her own after her face abruptly changes overnight.

This heartfelt Sofia Coppola–produced drama explores the intricacies of a father–daughter bond blossoming amid queer liberation and the AIDS crisis.

After being attacked outside a London nightclub, a drag queen decides to turn the tables in this Hitchcockian queer noir.

A rarely screened outlier in Argento’s career, this deliciously dark historical comedy follows a thief and a baker caught up in a political uprising.

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

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.

A quirky and lesser-known piece of the Italian giallo maestro’s tapestry, and a lesson in cinematic innovation.

With a laconic Jarmuschian vibe, Fremont is a heartfelt comedic ode to the immigrant experience.

Radical lesbians, radioactive fish lips and toxic cat food collide in this sci-fi – a transgressive landmark of anarcho-satire and queer hacktivism.

This rare Aussie take on the popular exorcism subgenre builds to a brutal finale you won’t be able to excise from your mind.

Chantal Akerman puts love and capitalism in the crosshairs in this acidly funny, vibrantly coloured musical set entirely within a shopping mall.

An engrossing moral thriller set against a nation torn in two, which won the inaugural Un Certain Regard Freedom Prize.

A maximalist, kaleidoscopic visual essay of hurt and healing, and a one-of-a-kind statement of bodily sovereignty from wunderkind Fox Maxy.

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.

It’s the end of the world as we know it and no-one feels fine in Soda Jerk’s latest cinematic remix, which sassily swipes at deepfakes and Trumpism.

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

Bringing echoes of the Coen brothers and Tarantino to the mean streets of Morocco, this Cannes prize winner is not the Casablanca you think you know.

The stakes are high but the cost of sitting idle is higher for a group of environmental activists who band together to disrupt the oil industry.

A sun-drenched, hormone-laden trip of teenage kicks turns dark in this compellingly contemporary navigation of sexual politics.

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.

The first Jordanian film to screen at Cannes takes ferocious aim at the country’s ingrained misogyny.

This hypnotic, transcendental debut feature follows a young man’s mystical journey across a beguiling rural Vietnam.

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

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

An ancient Hindu demon stalks an Indian-American teen between two cultures in this terrifying and original monster movie.

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

Winner of the French Touch Prize of the Jury at Cannes Critics’ Week, this coming-of-age drama is a stirring social-realist fiction debut.

Rachel Sennott (Bodies Bodies Bodies; Shiva Baby) shines in this formally ambitious – and, yes, funny – portrait of a stand-up comedian battling PTSD.

“When will you return?” This haunting question – familiar to many an expat – is asked of a Senegalese student in West Berlin.

In this award-winning outback journey of discovery, now brilliantly restored, Toni Collette stars as a geologist at odds with a Japanese businessman.

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

Naturalistic and brimming with empathy, this debut drama unfolds over 24 hours in a marginalised Muslim community in India.

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.

A pope’s audacious act tears the Catholic Church and all of Italy apart in this gripping true story.

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

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.

A preternaturally skilled archaeologist goes on an Orphean quest for his lost love in Alice Rohrwacher’s latest and most romantically bewitching film.

Catherine Breillat (Abuse of Weakness) returns with a daring portrait of a woman’s intimate relationship with her teen stepson, starring Léa Drucker.

The Aussie brothers behind 100 Bloody Acres mix frights and frivolity in recreating a 1970s talk show that goes straight to hell.

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

This trailblazing work – the first feature made by a woman from Sub-Saharan Africa – sets a story of love and land against a postcolonial backdrop.

In her first foray into cinema, Safi Faye acts in Jean Rouch’s comedy about two Nigeriens whose Paris trip becomes a lesson in ‘reverse ethnography’.

In this Annecy Best Feature–winning adaptation of the Le petit Nicolas comic books, a mischievous character meets the men who brought him to life.

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

Christianity clashes with African spiritualism when a mother summons a tribal priest to avenge her daughter in this oddity of 70s Black cinema.

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

In this tense coming-of-age drama direct from Cannes Critics’ Week, a teenage boy confronts the political injustice upheld by his mother.

Amat Escalante’s follow-up to The Untamed is a stunningly visualised crime thriller that lays bare the class conflict and vice within modern Mexico.

A SXSW Audience Award winner, this doc traces the unlikely ascendancy of one of rock’s most influential yet under-sung figures: Pavement’s Gary Young.

In this exceptional debut feature, a supernatural discovery transfigures two teenagers’ world of graffiti, grief and suburban exploration.

Joel Edgerton and Sigourney Weaver deliver outstanding, nuanced performances in Paul Schrader’s latest explosive study of male guilt and redemption.

Julianne Moore and Natalie Portman team up in Todd Haynes’s perfectly camp melodrama that dredges up a sexual scandal.

Scissors out! Someone literally slays at a hairdressing competition in this exuberant one-take murder mystery.

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

The first virtually produced Australian feature, Mercy Road is an unrelentingly tense psychological thriller from Tracks director John Curran.

MIFF Ambassador Robert Connolly presents a radiant 4K restoration of his debut feature: an entertaining, anti-capitalist caper of greed and deception.

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

A dazzling 4K restoration of Taiwanese auteur Hou Hsiao-hsien’s sensual 2001 tale of an adrift bar hostess at the turn of the millennium.

A disgraced journalist is confronted with an unexplained artefact that may not be of this world, but is about to become the centre of hers.

Hirokazu Kore-eda’s tender answer to the question ‘Who’s the monster?’, awarded Best Screenplay and the Queer Palm at Cannes, will melt your heart.

In a rare work of pure fiction for Safi Faye, drawing from a Wolof legend, a teen brings disaster to her village after defying an arranged marriage.

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.

In their quest to restore long-lost romance, two sisters learn that the course of true love never runs smoothly.

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

In this award-winning feature debut, one chaotic day sees a young trans man’s past chase him as he chooses his future.

In this Cannes Un Certain Regard comedy, the ineffability of romance is put to the test by an unfaithful married philosopher.

Put on your ballet shoes for this triumphant, feel-good tale of a 12-year-old Parisian dancer who overcomes the odds of institutional prejudice.

In this gripping blend of fact and fiction, revered Iranian auteur Jafar Panahi (3 Faces, MIFF 2018) decides whether to cross a line for his beliefs.

Experience F.W. Murnau’s iconic 1922 vampire film brought to life by a live orchestra, coming exclusively to Ulumbarra Theatre for one night only.

Four Congolese people accused of practising sorcery forge very different spiritual paths in this electrifying Cannes award-winning cinematic mixtape.

Moving cities is the perfect excuse to throw a party … and unpack some awkward home truths.

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.

After bringing bloodshed to a ballet school in Suspiria, the giallo maestro wreaks operatic havoc on a soprano tackling a Shakespeare adaptation.

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

Love Is Strange (MIFF 2014) director Ira Sachs embraces the art of French cinema in this queer, Paris-set musing on a complicated relationship.

What if the lover who never was is ‘the one’? This swooning romance follows a Korean woman whose heart is torn by the road not taken.

In this sensitively told drama, a teenager’s battle with body image is a microcosm for the crushing weight of beauty standards on all young women.

In this triumphant return to narrative film, Wim Wenders tackles life’s little details – mess and all – with his trademark meditative movement.

Oozing blood, shapeshifting and a serial killer on the loose – this high school body horror is a feminist-charged frenzy, starring Alicia Silverstone.

There’s no-one better to deliver an outré rendition of the Music of the Night than an underground maestro who loves mayhem and organ music.

This oeuvre of outré, starring a then-14-year-old Jennifer Connelly, is widely regarded as one of Dario Argento’s most eccentric and bizarre films.

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

Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s iconic final film is a ravishing adaptation of Jean Genet’s homoerotic classic about a deadly sailor on shore leave.

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.

CODA scene-stealer Eugenio Derbez leads this luminous Sundance Festival Favorite Award winner about an inspiring teacher.

Get lost with three women as they wander a town on the outskirts of Tokyo, whose discombobulating architecture mirrors the vastness of life.

Man Ray’s classic shorts are reimagined for their 100th anniversary alongside an ecstatic soundtrack from SQÜRL members Jim Jarmusch and Carter Logan.

Direct from Cannes comes a charming, lo-fi fantasy caper for adults and children alike that’s destined for cult status.

In this beautifully bittersweet hand-drawn ode to friendship, a dog must find new meaning when misfortune separates him from his robot buddy.

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.

Hugo Weaving and Phoenix Raei play a hermit and cop who form an unlikely connection amid crisis in this wonderfully weird sucker-punch of tenderness.

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

The hauntings of the Sri Lankan Civil War are explored with quiet, incisive force in this Rotterdam Special Jury Prize winner.

Jillian Nguyen, Sam Neill, Tim Minchin and Deborah Mailman lend their voices to this Australian animated adventure based on the popular novel and game.

A grieving girl connects with her estranged father in this Sundance World Cinema Grand Jury Prize–winning debut infused with warmth and light.

This beguiling tale of a middle-aged man who’s lost his bearings doubles as a charming meditation on the frayed bonds of family.

Cannes Best Actress winner Zar Amir-Ebrahimi anchors this Sundance award-winning portrait of a mother seeking a new life for herself and her daughter.

First-time director Randall Park (Fresh off the Boat; Always Be My Maybe) takes on social mores with this fresh and fun misanthropic comedy.

As much an ode to the daily creative grind as it is to the creative partnership between director Kelly Reichardt and actor Michelle Williams.

A disconnected young woman becomes dangerously obsessed with an ASMR streamer in this disorientating, distinctive debut from New Zealand.

Bong Joon-ho protégé Jason Yu’s clever horror debut stars South Korean favourites Lee Sun-kyun (Parasite) and Jung Yu-mi (Train to Busan).

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

Witchcraft, revenge and Indigenous rancour swell in this atmospheric, anti-colonial bildungsroman set in 19th-century Chile.

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

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

The supernatural encroaches on a woman’s simple existence in this FIPRESCI Prize–winning tale of folklore, deception and retribution.

A Gen Z woman contends with shifting cultural values and the one-child policy’s lasting impacts to understand her place in the world.

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

A husband and wife get mixed up with their doppelgangers in this Hitchcockian thriller from Iranian auteur Mani Haghighi (Pig; A Dragon Arrives!).

In this affecting Melbourne-set queer drama, a teenager’s coming of age is complicated by an unexpected sexual awakening.

With a title derived from the Latin phrase ‘sighs from the depths’, Dario Argento’s most famous film is a masterwork of skin-crawling terror.

Sean Price Williams makes his feature directorial debut with this freewheeling picaresque trip through the cliques and communes of today’s USA.

William Greaves’s once-forgotten countercultural masterpiece about a beleaguered New York movie crew turns the conventions of filmmaking inside out.

Inspired by the director’s own brush with an obsessive fan, this stylish slasher offers meta-commentary on sexism and screen violence.

A series of formally daring vignettes about the absurdity and menace of state control in Iran, laced with both scathing irony and glimmers of hope.

A ragtag cast and crew of theatre nerds bring extra drama to save their beloved summer camp in this uproarious mockumentary.

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

The beast is unleashed in this Cannes award-winning debut – and she’s a 12-year-old Malaysian schoolgirl whose body is changing in more ways than one.

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

A deft exploration of the brutal scars of colonialism whose genre twists and turns give new meaning to ‘the horror of war’.

A spellbinding family portrait that presents a child’s-eye view of love, loss and life in all their messy, glorious, heartbreaking colour.

This dazzling rabbit hole of a film, which evokes cinephile Everest La Flor (MIFF 2019), sketches the ‘before’ and ‘after’ of a woman’s disappearance.

Claire Denis’s divisive, seductively erotic horror film rises again, with Béatrice Dalle and Vincent Gallo in all their grisly, sensuous glory.

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.

When the laws of time and space are turned topsy-turvy, what would you give up for one last moment with a lost love?

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

Following a tragedy at sea, the lives of two orphaned refugees and an Australian aid worker are inextricably woven together in this humanistic drama.

Telling four stories (or maybe just one) over four storeys, Hong Sang-soo’s latest MIFF entry is a shrewd chamber play set within a single building.

In this gorgeous new 4K restoration, Hungarian slow-cinema master Béla Tarr finds metaphysical horror in a nascent revolution.

Becoming one with nature takes a dystopian turn in this visionary rotoscoped romance.

A brooding taxi driver becomes obsessed with the lives of his passengers in Brian McKenzie’s forgotten Melbourne gem, now lovingly restored.

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.

An elderly caravan-park resident tangles with a mysterious woman in this deliciously unpredictable horror debut from an Australian filmmaking duo.

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