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.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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 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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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?

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?

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

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

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.

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