Documentaries
Full of thought-provoking ideas and unforgettable people, these revealing documentaries overflow with curiosity about our extraordinary world.
Adam’s Apple
In this candid and heartwarming portrait of transition – through gender and into adulthood – a filmmaker mother and trans son capture the power of acceptance and authenticity.
American Doctor
An unapologetic cry for humanity that reveals the on-the-ground reality of the genocide in Gaza and the experiences of the frontline medical volunteers who put their principles into practice.
Better Go Mad in the Wild
Karlovy Vary’s Crystal Globe winner is an enchanting portrait of solitude and free-spirited abandon following eccentric twin brothers living in the Czech wilderness.
Closure
Transcending true-crime cliché, this masterful study of obsession documents a father’s quest for answers in the wake of his teenage son’s disappearance.
The Cycle of Love
To find the Swedish girl who’d won his heart, a young Indian artist set out to cross the world – by bike. Find out what happened next in this moving true story.
Everybody to Kenmure Street
The thrilling tale of a Glasgow community’s spontaneous act of civil resistance that saved two of their own from a Home Office deportation raid.
Footy Shorts
MIFF and the AFL, supported by VicScreen, present five short documentaries centred on Australia’s game.
Gabin
Gracefully condensing a decade’s worth of footage, this tender nonfiction gem out of Cannes chronicles the adolescence of a boy in northern France.
The History of Concrete
When an inventive cult filmmaker decides to make a Hallmark-style documentary on concrete, he paves a path to something far more profound and hilarious.
Joybubbles
Inspiring Apple’s Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs, the telephone hacker who was born blind made headlines as both a tech prodigy and a big-hearted iconoclast.
Kings of Venice
Amid all the colour and chaos of Venice Beach, (ultra-)competitive paddle tennis players are a band apart. The only thing that can unite them? A hatred of pickleball.
Knife: The Attempted Murder of Salman Rushdie
A religious zealot stabbed him 15 times. But the outspoken novelist survived – and, as this documentary shows, retained his belief that creative freedom is the sharpest weapon.
Landmarks
Thirteen years in the making, Lucrecia Martel’s potent true-crime documentary connects the murder of an Indigenous leader to a national history of violence.
Lomu
A nuanced portrait of Kiwi Tongan rugby union superstar Jonah Lomu, history’s youngest All Black, whose legend remains a beacon for Pasifika pride.
Marc by Sofia
Made in her signature intimate style, Sofia Coppola’s debut documentary invites long-time friend Marc Jacobs to share his creative sensibility.
Mary Oliver: Saved by the Beauty of the World
Bestselling Pulitzer Prize–winning poet Mary Oliver was famously private; a loving look at her one wild and precious life sheds new light on her cherished work.
The Match
The mythology of the fateful 1986 World Cup quarter-final clash between England and Argentina is untangled in this thrilling documentary.
The Oligarch and the Art Dealer
The true story of one of the world’s richest men and one of the 21st-century art world’s greatest frauds. Or is it?
Once Upon a Time in Harlem
Gather alongside Harlem Renaissance luminaries in this incredible time capsule, finally completed more than 50 years after the footage was shot.
One in a Million
A profound cinematic odyssey filmed over a decade, this portrait of the coming of age of a Syrian girl in exile won Sundance’s Documentary Competition Audience and Directing awards.
Palimpsest: The Story of a Name
Through a canny postcolonial lens, a filmmaker whose Western name is at odds with her Chinese heritage peels back conflicting layers of family history.
Past Future Continuous
This layered, IDFA-awarded portrait of an Iranian family long divided by geography but reunited by technology exudes a keen and haunting resonance.
Rehearsals for a Revolution
Receiving the highest documentary prize at Cannes, this inspired essay movie channels the tumult of Iranian history into a personal account of loss.
Remake
In his most devastatingly personal work to date – awarded at Venice and True/False – veteran auto-documentarian Ross McElwee probes his home movies for insights into his son’s death.
School for Defectors
Spending a year in a school for children of North Korean refugees, Jeremy Workman’s documentary is as humanistic as it is intimate.
The Siege of Paradise
Scoring a Special Jury Mention at Tribeca, this documentary turns its lens on overtourism in Italy’s Cinque Terre, dubbed “the most beautiful place in the world”.
Silenced
Jennifer Robinson, Amber Heard and Brittany Higgins have all experienced the full force of weaponised defamation laws – but these indomitable activists and survivors of gendered violence won’t keep quiet.
Sovereign Shorts
MIFF and NITV, supported by VicScreen, present four original and compelling short documentaries exploring Treaty as lived experience.
To Hold a Mountain
With poetic empathy, this Sundance Grand Jury Prize winner maps the love and determination that tie a Montenegrin shepherd to her land.
Tristan Forever
A burnt-out Parisian doctor travels to an ultra-remote, penguin-populated South Atlantic isle in search of isolation, salvation and perhaps even love.