Written by Chris Swan
May 7, 2025
What To See at the 2025 Sydney Film Festival
The wait is over and the full program for the 2025 Sydney Film Festival has arrived!
With a lineup of 200+ films from all over the world, for 11 days this June Sydney will become the cinema capital of the Australia. With an incredible 22 films brought to you by Madman, here’s a list of our films featured in this year’s program.
Sydney Film Festival runs in cinemas June 4 – 15.
Check out the full program HERE
Journey Home, David Gulpilil
World Premiere – Australian Documentary Competition
David Gulpilil was one of Australia’s most outstanding Indigenous film actors. JOURNEY HOME, DAVID GULPILIL is the story of Gulpilil’s journey home after his passing in 2021, back to his birthplace, the centrepiece of which is his Bäpurru ceremony in Marwuyu near the Arafura Swamp and the remote community of Ramingining, Eastern Arnhem Land. Narrated by Academy Award nominee Hugh Jackman with Storyteller Danzal Baker aka Baker Boy, this remarkable documentary is a rare insight into a powerful ceremony of renewal and regeneration and is told completely from the Yolŋu perspective, and that of his family.
Introduction and Q&As from members of the filmmaking team at select screenings.
Book Tickets
Pike River
World Premiere
Featuring an all-star cast including Melanie Lynskey, Robyn Malcolm and Lucy Lawless, PIKE RIVER tells the incredible true story of Anna Osborne and Sonya Rockhouse, whose unlikely friendship empowered them to fight for justice after the 2010 Pike River Mine exposition took the lives of 29 men, trapping them underground.
Introduction and Q&As from members of the filmmaking team at select screenings.
Book Tickets
It Was Just An Accident
Australian Premiere – Official Competition
What begins as a minor accident sets in motion a series of escalating consequences. Direct from the Cannes Film Festival, IT WAS JUST AN ACCIDENT is the new film from renowned filmmaker Jafar Panahi. Considered one of Iranian cinema’s greatest living masters, Panahi is known globally for award winning works that deliver heartfelt drama and intimate examinations of both our humanity and society at large.
In addition to the Australian Premiere of of IT WAS JUST AN ACCIDENT, Sydney Film Festival is also presented retrospective program of the amazing cinematic works of Jafar Panahi, including the award-winning films TEHRAN TAXI and 3 FACES.
Find more information on these titles and the full Jafar Panahi: Cinema in Rebellion strand HERE.
DJ Ahmet
Australian Premiere – Official Competition
Ahmet, a 15-year-old boy from a remote Yuruk village in North Macedonia, finds refuge in music while navigating his father’s expectations, a conservative community, and his first experience with love — a girl already promised to someone else.
Winner of the Audience Award and Special Jury Prize for World Cinema at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, DJ AHMET is a delightful and inspiring tribute to the unifying power of music at any age, as well as the unexpected freedoms it can provide.
Introduction and Q&As from members of the filmmaking team at select screenings.
Book Tickets
Marlon Williams: Ngā Ao E Rua – Two Worlds
Australian Premiere – First Nations Competition
This documentary from director Ursula Grace Williams is a joyful story of self-discovery, following renowned Aotearoa New Zealand singer-songwriter Marlon Williams on the profound revealing and joyful four-year journey of reconnection and self-discovery behind writing and recording his first album in te reo Māori.
Introduction and Q&As from members of the filmmaking team at select screenings.
Book Tickets
Deeper
Australian Premiere – Australian Documentary Competition
From the award-winning director of Sherpa, Mountain and River comes a cinematic journey into exploration’s final frontier.
Dr Richard “Harry” Harris, known around the world for his contributions to the 2018 Thai cave rescue, has devised a way to push further than anyone else into one of the deepest, darkest, most isolated cold-water cave systems in the world. His secret weapon is using hydrogen as a breathing gas, but hydrogen is so volatile that his support team may, literally, have to pick up the pieces.
Introduction and Q&As from members of the filmmaking team at select screenings.
Book tickets
The Wolves Always Come At Night
Australian Documentary Competition
From Gabrielle Brady, the award-winning director of Island of Hungry Ghosts, this fascinating hybrid documentary follows a young nomadic couple, along with their four children, living in desert of Bayanhongor province in Mongolia, caring for their birthing animals. The family is forced to adapt to a new way of life after a devastating storm wrought by climate change forces them from their homes.
Introduction and Q&As from members of the filmmaking team at select screenings.
Book Tickets
Ellis Park
Australian Documentary Competition
Everyone can impact the world around them in their own way; in the dark times of the COVID-19 pandemic famed musician Warren Ellis, a key member of iconic Australian bands The Dirty Three and Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, found his way to make a difference. This feature documentary from director Justin Kurzel (Snowtown, Nitram) details how Ellis took stock of his life, and used this time to set up an animal sanctuary in Sumatra.
Introduction and Q&As from members of the filmmaking team at select screenings.
Book Tickets
Birthright
Australian Premiere
There’s no place like home. Zoe Pepper’s BIRTHRIGHT is a darkly comedy and twisted tale about a disillusioned generation and their chase for the success of their baby boomer parents. Evicted and jobless, Cory and his pregnant wife are forced to stay with his parents. As the younger couple’s stay extends the parents’ become worried that their disappointing son will never leave the house. Desperate to prove himself, the edges of Cory’s reality slip away and he find an unexpected path to success that detonates the family.
Introduction and Q&As from members of the filmmaking team at select screenings.
Book Tickets
One to One: John & Yoko
Australian Premiere
Academy Award winning filmmaker Kevin Macdonald (One Day in September, Touching The Void), presents a unique take on a seminal time in the lives of one of music’s most famous couples, ONE TO ONE:JOHN & YOKO explores the eighteen months John Lennon and Yoko Ono spent living in Greenwich Village in the early 1970s
Book Tickets
Orwell 2+2=5
Australian Premiere
Direct from the Cannes Film Festival, ORWELL 2+2+5 interweaves archive footage of previous adaptations of George Orwell’s 1984 with a tapestry of resonant images from the 21st century. Oscar-nominated BAFTA-winning director Raoul Peck (I Am Not Your Negro) masterfully dissects the Orwell’s prescient vision and its vital lessons for our times and the future of our society.
Book Tickets
Mistress Dispeller
Australian Premiere
Desperate to save her marriage, a woman in China hires a professional to go undercover and breakup her husband’s affair. With strikingly intimate access, Elizabeth Lo’s MISTRESS DISPELLER follows this unfolding family drama from all corners of a love triangle.
Introduction and Q&As from members of the filmmaking team at select screenings.
Book Tickets
2,000 Meters To Andriivka
Australian Premiere
From the Oscar®-winning team behind 20 Days in Mariupol, 2000 METERS TO ANDRIIVKA documents the toll of the Russia-Ukraine war from a personal and devastating vantage point. Following his historic account of the civilian toll in Mariupol, director Mstyslav Chernov turns his lens towards Ukrainian soldiers, who they are, where they came from, and the impossible decisions they face in the trenches as they fight for every inch of their land. Winner of the World Cinema Documentary Directing Award at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival.
Book Tickets
Deaf
Australian Premiere
Winner of two awards at the Berlin Film Festival, Eva Libertad’s film explores an unprecedented theme in cinema: the relationship between a deaf woman and motherhood. Through the clever use of sound effects, the film not only fosters empathy for people with hearing impairments but also allows the audience to experience their joys and frustrations firsthand.
Book Tickets
Late Shift
Australian Premiere
Leonie Benesch (September 5, The Teachers’ Lounge) delivers a captivating performance as Flora, a nurse who works with passion as professionalism as she navigates the relentless pace on the surgical ward with unwavering dedication. Writer/Director Petra Volpe (The Divine Order) infuses LATE SHIFT with humanity and warmth while weaving an intense story that transforms into a gripping race against time, culminating in a riveting climax.
Book Tickets
Mr Nobody Against Putin
Australian Premiere
As Russia launches it’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, primary schools across Russia’s hinterlands are transformed into recruitment stages for the war. Facing the ethical dilemma of working in a system defined by propaganda and violence, a brave teacher goes undercover to film what’s really happening in his own school. Winner of the Special Jury Prize World Cinema Documentary at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival.
Book Tickets
The End
Australian Premiere
From Academy Award® nominated director Joshua Oppenheimer (The Act of Killing, The Look of Silence) comes a poignant and deeply human musical about a family that survived the end of the world. With captivating performances from George MacKay, Moses Ingram, Oscar® nominee Michael Shannon and Oscar® winner Tilda Swinton.
Book Tickets
Lowland Kids
Australian Premiere
Produced by Academy Award® nominee Darren Aronofsky (Black Swan, The Whale) and directed by award-winner Sandra Winthers, LOWLAND KIDS is an intimate film about pain and unity, and about the new realities of being a climate refugee in the American South.
Book Tickets
Mullet
World Premiere of 4K Restoration
Starring Ben Mendelsohn and Susie Porter, MULLET is a warm, often comic, look at love, relationships and belonging from acclaimed Australian filmmaker David Caesar. Presented at this year’s SFF with the world premiere of a brand new 4K restoration of this award-winning favourite.
Introduction and Q&As from members of the filmmaking team at select screenings.
Book Tickets
Somersault
World Premiere of 4K Restoration
The stunning award-winning debut feature from acclaimed Australian filmmaker Cate Shortland arrives with a brand new 4K restoration to celebrates it’s 20th anniversary. Winner of an astonish 13 AFI Awards, it helped launch the careers of stars Abbie Cornish and Sam Worthington. SOMERSAULT still endures as a beguiling and tender story of personal transformation and courage.
Introduction and Q&As from members of the filmmaking team at select screenings.
Book TicketsWith a stunning lineup featuring 200+ films, screening across 11 days, this year’s SFF has something to help unlock the true cinephile in everybody.
The 2025 Sydney Film Festival screens June 4-15. Tickets are on sale now!
More information and the full program are available here: https://www.sff.org.au
