Spotlight

This year’s Palme d’Or winner launches our Festival with a profound and galvanising reflection on truth, facts and fiction, pivoting around another extraordinary central performance from Sandra Hüller—familiar to audiences for her work in Toni Erdmann (NZIFF 2016) and In the Aisles, among other terrific films.

Strap in for an unforgettable, visionary trip, an Oscar-nominated journey that stunned Cannes with its cinematic flair. Your hosts? An octogenarian Polish auteur – and a donkey.

We close this year’s festival with the most delightful film from Cannes. Finnish director Aki Kaurismäki returns with a deadpan romantic crowdpleaser about two lost souls on a bumpy road to finding each other.

Direct from Cannes this visually rich costume drama rips the jaw-dropping true story of the abduction of a young Jewish boy by the Catholic church from the pages of history.

Natalie Portman shadows Julianne Moore in Todd Haynes’ salaciously entertaining metafictional psychodrama about an actress researching for a role in a film about a tabloid sex scandal.

Straight from Cannes where its intricately composed script was deservedly awarded, Kore-eda Hirokazu’s latest is a deeply affecting and morally complex drama told from multiple perspectives.

Set in 1940s Australia, an Aboriginal orphan arrives in the dead of night at a remote monastery run by a renegade nun (Cate Blanchett) in this spiritual thriller from Warwick Thornton.

Celine Song’s gorgeous, intensely bittersweet romance ruminates on the lives and loves of two childhood friends fleetingly reunited after decades apart – a remarkable debut feature that was the talk of Sundance.

Wim Wenders hits the sweet spot with this deceptively simple character study chronicling the daily life of a Tokyo cleaner, which is emotionally resonant in its stunning attention to detail and filmic poetry.

This rollicking mockumentary set at a scrappy theatre camp in upstate New York is an affectionate look at a ragtag troupe of eccentric misfits who just want to sing and dance.