Blake Williams returns to MIFF with a stereoscopic 3D piece that collapses time, distance and intimacy.

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.

In the woods, a young woman and man scuffle as they fight for life.

Sex is fodder for black comedy in this scathing portrayal of life in the age of COVID-19.

An African migrant living in Spain is confronted with the bitter meaning of ‘home’.

A chance meeting paves the way for a deeper connection.

A mixed martial arts fighter discovers she’s pregnant in the lead-up to the most important fight of her career.

Military rule fuses with ultra-modern digital technologies to open up an ethereal portal that transcends time.

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.

A couple’s date at a tucked-away hole-in-the-wall takes a turn for the ravenous.

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

A sweet, touchingly funny tale about a working-class teen whose newfound passion for singing helps her connect with her deaf family in new ways.

For one family, a wholesome trip to New Zealand’s remote countryside turns into the stuff of nightmares.

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

Two Fijian-Indian sisters escape their cousin’s wedding to get high on disobedience and drugs.

Leah Purcell AM writes, directs and stars in this highly anticipated adaptation – a vivid reckoning with Australia’s colonial history through the tale of one woman’s resilience.

An absurdist study of the human body as a limitless instrument for self-discovery.

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

Mytho-pagan eco horror meets fungi-infused body horror in the primordial South African jungle.

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

Slow-cinema master Lav Diaz returns with another mordantly meditative piece – one that nabbed him Venice’s Orizzonti Best Director gong.

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.

Divorced, lonely and inept with the web, a 50-year-old man decides to try his hand at finding love online – with spectacularly catastrophic results.

In a world with extremes of gravity, Rosa must navigate what it means to feel emotional ups and downs.

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

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.

Cannes’ 2020 Short Film Palme d’Or winner depicts the lengths a young man goes to in a bid to see his girlfriend one last time.

Kevin Jerome Everson’s camera dances with a rollerskater in this mesmerising exercise in fluidity and embeddedness.

A collective springs to life in this radiant tribute to radical Black politics.

In a forest in England, Ben Wheatley builds the folk horror of your most feverish pandemic nightmares.

The campaign to free Julian Assange takes on intimate dimensions in this documentary portrait of an elderly man’s fight to save his son.

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

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

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.

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.

Prayers by day, dreams by night – a mother keeps her son safe.

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

Two estranged friends stumble upon each other and reconnect over a shared loss.

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.

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

A lead turn reminiscent of Marlon Brando anchors this neo-realist look at the Maltese fishing industry.

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

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.

Leah Purcell AM writes, directs and stars in this highly anticipated adaptation – a vivid reckoning with Australia’s colonial history through the tale of one woman’s resilience.

This bruising, tender queer drama reminiscent of Beau Travail explores homophobia and repressed desire in the Apartheid-era South African military.

This timely, intelligent and emotional examination of state-sanctioned violence reveals a disturbingly universal story.

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.

Two brothers with diametrically opposed approaches to their faith are pitted against one another in this tense family drama.

A timber feller, kept awake by his infant child’s cries of hunger, encounters something perturbing in the woods.

Routine is the only thing keeping Nestor afloat.

Michael Beets depicts an elderly woman enacting the titular Japanese death ritual for her husband.

In this multi-award-winning drama, a child pickpocket dreams of a better life.

When the Victorian Government locks down his public-housing building, a teenager responsible for his mother’s welfare is pushed to the brink.

A narrative depiction of the events leading up to one of the darkest chapters in modern Australian history from MIFF Accelerator Lab alumnus director Justin Kurzel.

Maliciously outed after his death, musician Billy Tipton is now a transmasculine icon.

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.

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

Join a demon, a puppy and a rat in this stop-motion headtrip about a mysterious, magically summoned apple tree.

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

This winner of multiple Czech Lion awards as well as Venice’s UNICEF Award is a stunning, utterly harrowing indictment of humanity at its worst.

Awarded IFFR’s top prize, this lean, arresting debut follows a primal father–son road trip across the arid landscapes of southern India.

Göteborg’s Best Feature Film winner fearlessly dissects the contemporary porn industry through the perspective of a young woman determined to be a star.

Stuck in a holding pattern, two men attempt to break the cycle.

Naina Sen explores the relationship between biracial identity and generational belonging through traditional Balinese dance.

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.

This Sundance 2020 Audience Award winner is a revelatory, immersive adaptation of Naoki Higashida’s memoir of a neurodiverse life.

You always have to watch out for those early warning signs.

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.

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

An intimidating encounter with a group of teens forces a 12-year-old to ponder her place in the world.

Tradition and technology meet head-on in this tense coming-of-age drama about two Egyptian teens and a web of deceptions.

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

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.

A gang of streets kids is hired to pull off a dangerous heist in this Oscar-shortlisted coming-of-age drama from Iranian master director Majid Majidi.

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

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.

Abbas Kiarostami protégé Ahmad Bahrami’s 2020 Venice Orizzonti Award winner is a dreamlike expedition to a remote Iranian factory.

A ruminative film on the interplay between bovine lives and human consumption.

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

Yael Stone and Emily Barclay star as frenemy sisters in this sibling dramedy by Madeleine Gottlieb.