Written by Chris Swan
May 6, 2026
What To See at the 2026 Sydney Film Festival
The full program for the 2026 Sydney Film Festival has arrived!
With an incredible lineup of 250+ films from all over the world, once again for 11 days this June Sydney will become the cinema capital of the Australia.
With over 30 films brought to you by Madman, here’s a list of all of our films featured in this year’s program.
Sydney Film Festival runs in cinemas June 3 – 14.
Check out the full program HERE
Fatherland
Australian Premiere – Official Competition
FATHERLAND centers on the relationship between the Nobel Prize winning writer Thomas Mann (Hanns Zischler) and his daughter Erika (Academy Award® nominee Sandra Hüller) – actress, writer and rally driver. Set at the height of the Cold War, the film follows father and daughter as they embark on a challenging and emotional road trip taking them across a Germany in ruins – from U.S. dominated Frankfurt to Soviet controlled Weimar.
The latest film from Oscar® nominated director Pawel Pawlikoski comes to this year’s festival direct from it’s world premiere in competition at the Cannes Film Festival.
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Fjord
Australian Premiere – Official Competition
Internationally acclaimed director Cristian Mungiu returns to this year’s festival with his English-language debut, a thought-provoking family drama starring Academy Award® nominees Sebastian Stan and Renate Reinsve.
The Gheorghius – Catholic and Romanian – settle in a Norwegian village, the mother’s birthplace. They quickly bond with the Halbergs, who live in the neighbouring house near the bay. Despite their very different upbringings, the children of both families soon become close friends. Until the Gheorghius are suspected of hurting their own children…
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Sheep in the Box
Australian Premiere – Official Competition
The new Palme d’Or nominated film from acclaimed filmmaker Hirokazu Kore-eda, finds the writer/director tackling familiar themes of family, humanity and belonging against a modern science fiction backdrop.
In the near future, Otone and her husband, Kensuke, turn to a company that resurrects the deceased through AI generated robotics. They welcome a state-of-the-art humanoid into their home and try to rebuild their family.
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Boss Cat
World Premiere
We’re thrilled to announce BOSS CAT will be having its world premiere at Sydney Film Festival in June. A heartwarming female-driven coming of age comedy/drama about Sonja, a 23-year-old woman with Trisomy 21 (Down syndrome), BOSS CAT celebrates empowerment and diversity.
BOSS CAT, directed by Genevieve Clay-Smith, is Bus Stop Films’ first feature film, produced in partnership with WeirAnderson Films.
Introduction and Q&As from members of the filmmaking team at select screenings.
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The Fox
When an affable foxhunter encounters a talking Fox who offers him an opportunity to transform his fiancée into the perfect woman, thing don’t quite go as planned.
THE FOX is a darkly comic folktale, from Australian writer/director Dario Russo (Danger 5), featuring an all-star cast including Jai Courtney, Emily Browning, Damon Herriman, Claudia Doumit, Sam Neill and Academy Award® winner Olivia Colman.
Introduction and Q&As from members of the filmmaking team at select screenings.
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Whistle
Australian Premiere – Australian Documentary Competition
Step into the wild and wonderfully unique world of competitive whistling and witness the drama and passion of the World Whistling Convention.
WHISTLE follows dedicated whistlers from around the world as they converge in California, going head to head with renditions of everything from Bach and The Bee Gees to Adele and Bollywood classics. In a community where lines between mentor, friend, and rival are often blurred, these incredibly talented musicians find community through a shared love of an overlooked art form and together learn to celebrate their own uniqueness – and develop a serious lip balm addiction along the way.
Introduction and Q&As from members of the filmmaking team at select screenings.
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Yumburra
World Premiere – Documentary Australia Competition
In his book Dark Emu, Bruce Pascoe challenged Australia’s understanding of Indigenous cultures, arguing that Aboriginal agricultural practices demonstrated sophisticated land use, predating colonization. When the book became widely embraced, Pascoe found himself at the centre of a national debate. Amidst the noise, he wrote Black Duck: A Year at Yumburra, a deeply personal work.
The documentary YUMBURRA, like the book, follows the seasons and activities on Pascoe and his partner Lyn Harwood’s farm – the routine chores, experiments with food and agriculture, commentary on birds and other forms of wildlife, and memories of the devastating Black Summer bushfires—guided by Pascoe’s gentle narration and personal stories for his grandchildren.
Introduction and Q&As from members of the filmmaking team at select screenings.
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The Best Summer
Australia Premiere
Head backstage with the Beastie Boys, Sonic Youth, Foo Fighters and more in this revelatory Sundance rockumentary, capturing the 1995 Australian music festival Summersault.
An infectiously fun tour diary, THE BEST SUMMER unearths a treasure trove of never-before-seen footage from one of the most stacked festival lineups ever to grace Australian shores. Director Tamra Davis pieces together an electric time capsule of ’90s alternative music legends at the peak of their youthful powers. Featuring candid, frequently hilarious interviews with the likes of Kim Gordon, Thurston Moore, Kim Deal, Beck, Dave Grohl and Kathleen Hanna, alongside raucous on-stage antics, it’s an all-access pass to a momentous moment in Australian music history.
Introduction and Q&As from members of the filmmaking team at select screenings
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Lomu
Australian Premiere
Jonah Lomu was rugby’s first global superstar and for good reason – he was absolutely unstoppable.
Fondly known as “The Big Fella” Jonah stole the hearts of so many with his gentle giant personality… however off the pitch was where he faced his greatest tests. Underscored by incredibly tragic circumstances Jonah’s life was a constant battle of adversity and inner demons which often unfolded in the public eye. This is the definitive, untold documentary on the once in generation athlete, ‘the big fella’, Jonah.
Introduction and Q&As from members of the filmmaking team at select screenings.
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The Death of Robin Hood
Australian Premiere
Grappling with his past after a life of crime and murder, Robin Hood finds himself gravely injured after a battle he thought would be his last. In the hands of a mysterious woman, he is offered a chance at salvation.
From writer/director Michael Sarnoski (Pig, A Quiet Place: Day One), and starring Hugh Jackman and Jodie Comer, comes a story of violence, vengeance, and the dark truth behind the beloved tale of a hero that never was.
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Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Misama
Australian Premiere
The new film from Jane Schoenbrun (writer/director of I Saw The TV Glow) is an insane yet cozy midnight odyssey that beckons to unsuspecting viewers from the horror section at the local video store.
A queer filmmaker is hired to direct a new instalment of a long-running slasher franchise known as Camp Miasma. The director becomes fixated on the prospect of casting the reclusive actress who played the final girl in the original movie. As the two women begin to work together, they descend into a frenzy of psychosexual mania.
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Dead Man's Wire
Australian Premiere
Featuring captivating performances from Bill Skarsgård, Dacre Montgomery, Colman Domingo, and Al Pacino, Gus Van Sant’s latest recreates the strange, fascinating true story of the 1977 kidnapping that made aspiring Indianapolis entrepreneur Tony Kiritsis into an eccentric outlaw folk hero.
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Knife: The Attempted Murder of Salman Rushdie
Australian Premiere
KNIFE: THE ATTEMPTED MURDER OF SALMAN RUSHDIE is the engaging new documentary from Oscar® winning filmmaker Alex Gibney, inspired by Rushdie’s memoir Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder.
The film explores Rushdie’s recovery in the broadest sense. Through Rushdie’s wife Rachel Eliza Griffiths’ personal footage, which has never been seen by the public, the doc will follow the writer during not only his physical recovery but also the recovery of his spirit and hope for the future. Gibney’s latest is both a striking testament to freedom of expression and a defiant response to the attempt on Rushdie’s life.
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Rose
Australian Premiere
Amidst the turmoil of the Thirty Years’ War, somewhere in Germany, a mysterious soldier appears in a secluded Protestant village. Small and quiet, his face disfigured by a scar, this stranger declares himself the heir of a long-abandoned farmstead and produces a document to support his claim to the suspicious villagers.
Featuring a towering performance from Oscar® nominee Sandra Hüller, ROSE is the compelling true and twisted tale of a deceiver of land and folk, who, defying her birth as a woman, comported herself as a man and committed many a wicked deed.
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The History of Concrete
Australian Premiere
Following the finale of his TV series, How To With John Wilson, filmmaker John Wilson looks to the bedrock of his beloved New York City for inspiration and structure. Concrete, the world’s most widely used building material, appears as an ever-present life force, and John sets out to make the definitive documentary on the matter.
To tell this seemingly drab story, he decides to use the industry-approved Hallmark formula to increase his movie’s appeal. But his foundation soon begins to crumble—literally and figuratively—as he struggles to balance artistic freedom with the realities of the modern film industry in this hilarious and oddly heartfelt documentary,
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The Cycle of Love
Australian Premiere
A love story like no other, THE CYCLE OF LOVE is an inspiring, heart-warming, epic true-life adventure about self-belief, destiny and the courage to risk everything for love, traversing continents in a journey spanning Delhi to Sweden.
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Time and Water
Australian Premiere
Facing the death of his country’s glaciers and the loss of his beloved grandparents, Icelandic writer Andri Snær Magnason turns his archives into a time capsule to hold what is slipping away — family, memory, time and water.
TIME AND WATER is the moving new documentary from the team behind the Academy Award® nominated Fire of Love.
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The Tale of Silyan
From the Oscar® nominated director of Honeyland comes a poignant and visually arresting story set in the heart of rural Macedonia.
Nikola is a farmer who finds himself unable to sell his land or crops. When his family leaves in search of a better life abroad, Nikola takes a job as a landfill attendant, where he encounters the injured white stork Silyan. As he nurses the bird back to health, an unlikely bond forms between man and animal. The result is a deeply moving film that touches on climate change, economic migration, resilience and the quiet power of connection.
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Whispers in the Woods
Australian Premiere
Winner of Best Documentary and Best Sound at France’s top film awards, the César Awards, and featuring music from legendary Australian musician Warren Ellis, WHISPERS IN THE WOODS is the beautiful and captivating new film from the director of The Velvet Queen.
Delving deep into the woodland realms, where bears, deer, owls, and other river creatures roam, Filmmaker Vincent Munier not only seeks to pay tribute once again to the visual splendor of nature but also to capture the forest’s poetic sounds. This becomes a heartfelt declaration of Munier’s love for his father, intertwining familial bonds with the untamed beauty of the natural world.
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Hen
Australian Premiere
“With great power comes great responsibility” — but what if the hero is just a hen?
Escaping from a chicken farm, out hero hen finds refuge in the courtyard of a crumbling restaurant. There, she discovers love, confronts the pecking order, and fights to protect her eggs from a greedy owner. Following his cult films Taxidermia and Final Cut, György Pálfi is back with a tragicomic tale full of heart and feathers.
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Broken English
Tilda Swinton and George MacKay star in this loving tribute to singer, actor and cultural icon Marianne Faithfull from the makers of 20,000 Days on Earth.
Made with her full involvement, BROKEN ENGLISH is an intimate and unflinching exploration of a fractured yet unbreakable life shaped by fame, creative genius, and relentless public scrutiny. A genre-defying portrait of resilience and rebellion, a final fearless declaration, Marianne Faithfull’s defiant swan song.
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Rose of Nevada
Australian Premiere
The new mystery from the visionary BAFTA winning auteur Mark Jenkin, starring George MacKay and Callum Turner.
Shot on stunning 16mm film, ROSE OF NEVADA tells the story of a mysterious boat that returns to a village 30 years after vanishing. Two men join its crew hoping for better fortune. After one voyage, they find themselves transported back in time, mistaken for the original crew.
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Rosebush Pruning
Australian Premiere
In new dark comedy from award-winning filmmaker Karim Aïnouz, featuring an all-star cast including Callum Turner, Elle Fanning, Jamie Bell, Riley Keough, Tracy Letts and Pamela Anderson.
In an opulent villa underneath the Catalonian sun, American siblings Jack, Ed, Anna and Robert wallow in isolation and their inherited fortune, eschewing the demands of their blind father, and seeking love and validation until generational lies begin to unravel, and the fabric of this family slowly begins to disintegrate.
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American Doctor
Australian Premiere
When three American doctors—Palestinian, Jewish and Zoroastrian—enter Gaza to save lives, they find themselves caught between medicine and politics, risking everything to expose the truth.
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Birds of War
Australian Premiere
The Sundance award winning documentary is a beautifully constructed love story of London-based Lebanese journalist and Syrian-based activist/cameraman over thirteen years of revolutions, war and exile.
BIRDS OF WAR follows London-based Lebanese journalist, Janay, and Syrian activist Habak over 13 years, using personal archives to tell a love story across war, revolutions and exile.
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Closure
Australian Premiere
After his teenage son goes missing, Daniel scours the depths of the Vistula River, torn between the dread of a fatal leap and the hope that his son may still be alive.
CLOSURE is the riveting new documentary from award winning filmmaker Michal Marczak
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Flies
Australian Premiere
FLIES is the new film from award-winning filmmakers Fernando Eimbcke (Olmo, Duck Season), which captivated audiences at the Berlin International Film Festival, where the film won the Ecumenical Prize as well as the Morgenpost Reader’s Jury Award.
Olga lives a strictly regulated life without attachments in a vast apartment block. When out of financial necessity she rents a room in her apartment to a man who also sneaks-in his nine-year-old son, an unlikely bond forms. Her carefully controlled world begins to shift, and their lives become intertwined against her will.
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To Hold A Mountain
Australian Premiere
Winner of the Grand Jury Prize for World Cinema Documentary at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, TO HOLD A MOUNTAIN is an immersive and down-to-earth portrayal of a woman and her daughter standing in quiet opposition to the violence and power of the world.
In the remote highlands of Montenegro’s Sinjajevina plateau, Gara and her thirteen-year-old daughter Nada return to their ancestral pastures every summer, where they herd animals, gather herbs and live in symbiosis with the mountain they call “Mother.” But their fragile world comes under threat when the Montenegrin government advances plans for a NATO-backed military training ground in the heart of this protected landscape.
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On The Road
Australian Premiere
A rebellious drifter hitches a ride with a lone trucker. As their intimacy deepens on the road, ghosts of the past catch up with them at each truck stop —and danger closes in.
Filmmaker David Pablos’ Venice Film Festival Queer Lion award winning thriller portrays a romantic relationship between two men within a hostile, violent setting — the world of truck drivers and highways — governed by the rules of heteronormativity and hypermasculinity.
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Remake
Australian Premiere
Witt REMAKE, filmmaker Ross McElwee turns his lens on the passage of time and the uneasy space between documenting life and understanding it.
The documentary traces McElwee’s relationship with his son Adrian, and the fragile bond the camera created between them while Adrian was alive, and now that he’s gone. Drawing from decades of footage, some shot by Ross, some by Adrian, the film becomes a layered excavation of memory and image making.
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The Second Mother
Winner of over 20 film awards, THE SECOND MOTHER has captivated audiences and critics around the world with its honest and heart-warming depiction of a woman, whose role as a housekeeper – a ‘second mother’ – will be tested by family loyalty.
Anna Muylaert’s beloved film is returning to cinemas a part of this year’s retrospective on Brazilian cinema.
This is just a glimpse at the cinematic treats this year’s Sydney Film Festival has in store. With a stellar program featuring 250+ films, screening across 11 days, this year’s SFF will will be one of the biggest yet, and something every cinephile won’t want to miss!
The 2026 Sydney Film Festival screens June 3-14. Tickets are on sale now!
More information and the full program are available here: https://www.sff.org.au
