Festival Programme

Films by Genre

Women Make Features

All We Imagine As Light

Payal Kapadia

Direct from Competition in Cannes where it scored the Grand Prix, this radiant Indian drama follows two nurses looking for love but finding sisterhood in the vibrant, heaving 20 million plus populace of Mumbai.

American Stories: Food, Family and Philosophy

Histoires d'Amérique: Food, Family and Philosophy

Chantal Akerman

A poetic assemblage of monologues and daft skits form an affectionate ode to Jewish-American identity in this charming quasi-documentary from one of the most important directors of our time.

Gloria!

Margherita Vicario

An energetic re-envisioning of Baroque music through the lens of the fiery female composers whose revolutionary work was concealed throughout history.

Good One

India Donaldson

A 17-year-old grows disillusioned with her father as they take a hike through the Catskills in this incisive minimalist drama from debut feature filmmaker India Donaldson.

Grafted

Sasha Rainbow

Mean Girls  meets  Face/Off   to absolutely wild results in Sasha Rainbow’s gory and uniquely Kiwi black comedy about a Chinese student who finds a new way of achieving popularity one body at a time.

Green Border

Zielona granica

Agnieszka Holland

Brutal, enraging and heartrending, Polish writer-director Agnieszka Holland’s controversial take on the Polish-Belarusian border crisis serves as a startling call to arms in the face of a little-seen humanitarian crisis.

I Saw the TV Glow

Jane Schoenbrun

Gunge, goons, and girls with unbreakable psychic bonds are your new late-night obsession in this unsettling fable about what happens when you get offered a chance at a fantasy, but choose to settle for reality.

Janet Planet

Annie Baker

Acclaimed playwright Annie Baker ruminates on the evolving relationship between an 11-year-old misfit and her single mother during the summer holidays in this intimately observed debut feature.

A Mistake

Christine Jeffs

On the eve of a move towards greater public health data reporting, a medical error throws life into a spin for a respected surgeon and her surgical team; the downward spiral threatening all in her orbit.

My Favourite Cake

Keyke mahboobe man

Maryam Moghaddam, Behtash Sanaeeha

A lonely but fiercely determined 70-year-old widow takes second chance on love in this charming and funny yet politically subversive romance from Iran.

My First Film

Zia Anger

A young filmmaker recounts the story of directing her first feature in Zia Anger’s enthralling, deeply personal inquiry into the growing pains inherent to creation and collaboration.

The Outrun

Nora Fingscheidt

Saoirse Ronan brings Amy Liptrot’s award-winning memoir to the screen in this ardently moving portrait of addiction recovery set in the majestic Orkney Islands of Scotland.

The People's Joker

Vera Drew

Vera Drew lays her soul bare with this fever-dream of a DC Universe parody that takes us through the trippiest and most monumental moments of her life and gender realisation.

The Substance

Coralie Fargeat

Direct from wowing audiences at Cannes, Coralie Fargeat’s magnificent shocker closes out this year’s Festival in style and lays down her marker to take the crown as the new queen of carnage with this wildly entertaining feminist body-horror feast.

Tatami

Guy Nattiv, Zar Amir Ebrahimi

An Iranian judo champ weighs her principles and ambitions against the safety of her family and herself as government forces threaten violence unless she tows the party line, in this riveting political-sports-thriller.

We Were Dangerous

Josephine Stewart-Te Whiu

Earning director Josephine Stewart-Te Whiu the Special Jury Prize for Filmmaking at SXSW this year, this electric debut launches our festival with a fiery trio of delinquent schoolgirls railing against the colonial system in 1950s New Zealand.

Wild Diamond

Diamant brut

Agathe Riedinger

French director Agathe Riedinger, in her stunning feature-length debut, brings to life a unique heroine in Liane, a young woman obsessed with the glittery world of social media and reality TV fame.