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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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