Adelaide Film Festival Announces 2025 Program

ADELAIDE FILM FESTIVAL ANNOUNCES 2025 PROGRAM 

AND FESTIVAL JURY 

The Adelaide Film Festival (AFF) has today launched its full program for the 2025 Festival, to be held from October 15 – October 26 at cinemas across Adelaide.

Twenty-seven World Premieres and 37 Australian premieres are among the 123 films from 27 countries to be presented at AFF 2025.

The Festival is book-ended by the previously announced Opening Night Gala, Sophie Hyde’s much anticipated Jimpa, starring Olivia Colman, John Lithgow and Aud Mason-Hyde, and the announcement today of the Closing Night Gala, an AFFIF Exclusive presentation of the equally anticipated Wolfram, the latest film from one of Australia’s foremost directors Warwick Thornton.

Wolfram, starring the brilliant Deborah Mailman alongside Erroll Shand, Joe Bird, Thomas M Wright, Matt Nable and Pedrea Jackson, and produced by Bunya Productions’ Greer Simpkin and David Jowsey, is the sequel to Thornton’s acclaimed film Sweet Country.  Wolfram is a taut frontier western where Aboriginal child labourers in the mines confront colonial brutality and injustice.

In another exclusive, Adelaide Film Festival will present Causeway Films’ The Fox, directed by Dario Russo, and starring Emily Browning, Jai Courtney and Damon Herriman. Supported by the Adelaide Film Festival Investment Fund. The Foxis a darkly comic folktale of an ordinary bloke and the fox who offers to solve all his problems.

AFF’s Friday Night Party features a screening of the mind-blowing film Sirât followed by the Festival’s opening weekend after party, which is sure to be riotous. In Sirât, which stole the show in Cannes this year, winning the Jury Prize, thumping bass shakes the mountain air as a father and his teenage son hurl themselves into Morocco’s epic outdoor rave party circuit, desperate to find the daughter and sister who has been missing for far too long. Sirât is a French/Spanish production directed by Olivier Laxe with Pedro Almodóvar amongst the producers. 

AFF’s Special Presentations comprises much-anticipated film titles from the major fall festivals:

• From Venice is Guillermo Del Toro’s breathtaking Frankenstein, adapted from Mary Shelley’s 1818 classic novel, starring Australia’s hottest young actor on the international stage, Jacob Elordi, with Christoph Waltz, Mia Goth and Oscar Isaac.  

• Also from Venice, Bugonia, a black comedy by Yorgos Lanthimos which reunites the director with actors Oscar® winner Emma Stone and Oscar® nominee Jesse Plemons (who previously starred together in Lanthimos’ Kinds of Kindness [2024]).

• Direct from TIFF is the wise and whimsical dramedy Rental Family, directed by Hikari and starring Oscar® winner Brendan Fraser, about an American actor in Tokyo suffering imposter syndrome.

•  Direct from Telluride is Scott Cooper’s biopic Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere.  Jeremy Allen White stars as The Boss alongside Jeremy Strong and Australia’s Odessa Young.

This year’s Retrospectives program offers a very special tribute to a man close to all our hearts, the legendary film critic and cinéaste David Stratton, with a special presentation of his favourite film of all time, the 1952 classic Singin’ In The Rain, directed by Gene Kelly and Stanley Donan; and starring Kelly with Donald O’Connor and Debbie Reynolds. 

The Retrospective program also features Robert Connolly’ssearing Balibo, starring Anthony LaPaglia and Oscar Isaac, which tells of the deaths in East Timor of the journalists who came to be known as the Balibo 5 and the investigation into a war crime that our government would prefer to be forgotten. 

Connolly – a writer/director/producer and entrepreneur – will be honoured with this year’s Don Dunstan Award – which recognises an exceptional individual who has made an outstanding contribution to Australian screen culture.

The AFF competition, established in 2007, was the first in Australia with prize winners determined by a jury of esteemed professionals. Nominated films are selected by the AFF programming team, hand-picked for their distinctiveness, courage in pushing the artform, or their ability to profoundly connect with audiences. Often the work of first or second-time directors, these are the voices of tomorrow’s cinema. 

This year’s Jury – which considers both the Feature Fiction and the Feature Documentary Awards –  is headed by Emmy-Award Australian actor Murray Bartlett, star of the first series of White Lotus, and he will be joined by First Nations director Jub Clerc (Sweet As); Pavel Cortés who is the Director of Programming for the Guadalajara International Film Festival, Mexico; British/Australian writer, director, producer and international screen executive Marion Pilowsky; and Australian film, television and theatre director and writer John Sheedy (H is for Happiness, Runt). 

This year’s Feature Fiction Competition includes A Useful Ghost, the Grand Prize winner at Critics’ Week, Cannes, by Thai writer/director Ratchapoom Boonbunchachoke; the Austrian/Slovakian film Perlaby Alexandra Makarová; the lyrical ghost story Phantoms of July by German director Julian Radlmaier; another Critics’ Week selection, Reedland, by Dutch director Sven Bresser; and the Mexican film Vanilla from director Mayra Hermosillo, a layered, bittersweet portrait of belonging, survival and love.

Five films have been selected for the Feature Documentary Competition. They are Cast Off, where German filmmaker Julian Wittman joins an octogenarian sailor who abandoned society for the sea; North South Man Woman, where directors Christina Sun Kim and Morten Traavik examine a North Korean defector’s matchmaking business which pairs Northern women with Southern men; Sanatorium (director Gar O’Rourke) which takes us to a sanatorium in Odesa, where guests chase healing and connection while a playful camera finds irony in the war’s long shadow; She (director Parsifal Reparato), a searing and moving study on globalisation’s impact on the collective lives of Vietnamese women factory workers, living away from their families; and, The Tale of Silyan, where the Oscar® nominated director of Honeyland, Tamara Kotevska, returns with the story of an unlikely friendship between a North Macedonian farmer left behind as his family seeks work abroad, and Silyan, the wounded white stork he rescues. 

Established in 2020, the $5,000 AFF Change Award is for positive or environmental impact and cinema expressing new directions for humanity. This year’s films express the urgency for change – with crises in climate and the environment, in the world’s on-going brutal conflicts and in human rights abuses. They are: Black Water(director Natxo Leuza), an observational documentary that showcases the struggle for survival and hope in Bangladesh; Only on Earth (director Robin Petré) about wild horses and wildfires in Galicia, Spain;  and Power Station where directors, artists and activists Dan Edelstyn and Hilary Powell launch a plan to install solar panels on every house in their London street; Trade Secret (director Abraham Joffe) which follows three unlikely allies across six years and nine countries as they probe a global loophole; the polar bear fur trade, legally sanctioned in the name of conservation; and Until The Sky Falls Quiet (directors Erica Yen-Chin Long, Jason Korr) which follows two Sydney doctors who volunteer to work in war-torn Gaza.

Adelaide Film Festival’s Investment Fund (AFFIF) has enabled Adelaide to showcase its stories, talent and locations and – of equal civic importance – share the progressive values that are a hallmark of South Australia with the rest of the world. Underpinned by these values, AFFIF has been a driving force behind some of Australia’s most significant films, creating a relevant cinema distinguished by its creativity and cultural importance.

In addition to The Fox, Jimpa, Wolframand the previously announced The Colleano Heart, Edge of Lifeand Penny Lane is Dead, AFFIF films to screen this year include Mockbuster, where Adelaide filmmaker Anthony Frith turns a camera on himself when he lands a shot at  glory with Hollywood’s kings of B-movie schlock, The Asylum, the studio behind Sharknado (NB:  AFF will also screen the film that Anthony filmed himself making, The Land That Time Forgot, a lost world dinosaur film made in suburban Adelaide on a seemingly impossible six-day shoot and shoestring budget). It’s a double bill not be missed!

AFFIF alumni Jolyon Hoff and Muzafar Ali return with the AFFIF-supported We Are Not Powerless, about the school that Muzafar and his wife Nagina established in Indonesia after their flight from the Taliban in Afghanistan. Jolyon and Muzafar met while Muzafar was living as a refugee. We Are Not Powerless is their third feature documentary, uniting the refugee and non-refugee communities around this remarkable story of resilience, hope, connection and community. 

The final AFFIF titles screening this year are the two short films Lie Down, Breathe Out, from director Gemma Salomon, about a disoriented woman who, trapped in a clinic that denies pain relief, faces an impossible choice; and director Lotte Sweeney’s The Knight, a sweetly surreal romantic comedy.

In this year’s AFF Country Spotlight, the films of Mexico are celebrated. Inspired by the program at the recent Guadalajara Film Festival and filled with the vibrancy and colour of the country itself, AFF audiences are in for a treat as they explore a country rich in creativity and history. Titles include the competition film Vanilla as well as director J. Xavier Velasco’ Crocodilesabout violence against the media, Aria Covamonas’ grand The Great History of Western Philosophy; and the unflinching black and white drama Twelve Moons directed by Victoria Franco.

With films from master filmmakers to emerging voices, the World Cinema collection has many new experiences for audiences to discover, including  American director Richard Linklater’s Blue Moon, starring Ethan Hawke, Andrew Scott, Margaret Qualley and Bobby Cannavale; the Palestinian family epic All That’s Left of You(director Cherien Dabis);  the irreverent Australian generational drama Birthright (director Zoe Pepper); the Australian indie feature Fwends, directed by Sophie Somerville, that captivated audiences at Berlin where it won the Caligari Film Prize; winner of the Grand Prize for World Cinema at Sundance, Cactus Pears (director Rohan Parashuram Kanawad); Berlin Panorama Audience Award winner Deaf, from Spanish director Eva Libertad; New York-based Argentine director Lucio Castro’s third feature Drunken Noodles, which premiered at the Cannes: Acid Sidebar;  Eagles of the Republicin which Swedish-Egyptian director Tarik Saleh brilliantly skewers Egypt’s military-based government, completing his ‘Cairo Trilogy’ (the second part of which, The Boy from Heaven, screened at AFF 2022); the buzziest title at Sundance, If I Had Legs I’d Kick You, directed by Mary Bronstein, and featuring an astonishing performance from Australia’s Rose Byrne; the previously announced Cannes Palme d’Or winner, Jafar Panahi’s It Was Just an Accident; the Cannes Special Jury Prize winner Resurrection (director Bi Gan); and many more cinema gems from China, the UK, Indonesia, Germany, Lithuania, Iraq, the US, India and Brazil for AFF audiences to unearth and explore. 

The World Documentary section takes audiences from the highlands of Angola with Herzog to the winter steppes of Mongolia, to the oral storytelling elders of Laos villages and to the metre-by-metre fighting lives of Ukrainian young men – offering a collection of films that gives us insight into unknown worlds and into the hearts and minds of the inspiring and the brave. We are also taken into the complex lives and philosophical contemplations of two of the 20th century’s most powerful writers, with The Edna O’Brien Story (director Sinéad O’Shea), which is a final, fearless reckoning with one of Ireland and literature’s most defiant voices; and master documentarian Raoul Peck’s biographical study of George Orwell, Orwell: 2 + 2 = 5.The selection includes Journey Home, David Gulpililfrom directors Maggie Miles and Trisha Morton-Thomas.

AFF’s Music on Film selection never disappoints and 2025 will be no exception with the loving tribute It’s Never Over, Jeff Buckley (director Amy Berg); Jimmy Barnes: Working Class Man (director Andrew Farrell); and the evocative Marlon Williams: Ngā Ao E Rua – Two Worlds (director Ursula Grace Williams). 

The resurgence of genre through innovative storytelling continues with AFF’s Late Night program.  The fearless can scream at the screen late into the night with diabolical offerings from Australian, Indonesian and New Zealand filmmakers.  And the phenomenon is further explored in the Screen Conversations program with an in-depth talk with filmmakers Mia’Kate Russell (Penny Lane is Dead), Finnius Teppett (The Weed Eaters), along with Hadrah Daeng Ratu and Lele Laila (The Book Of Sijjin and Illiyyin). 

This year’s Screen Conversations also feature extended conversations with Jimpa director Sophie Hyde and stars Aud Mason-Hyde and Daniel Henshall about the secret art of acting and with Edge of Life’s visionary director Lynette Wallworth and shaman Muka Yawanawa, from the Brazilian Amazon, who features in the film. 

Cinemastes will also love two films about filmmakers – Mad Max and the Genius of George Miller (director Chris Eley) and Nouvelle Vague about Jean-Luc Godard’s Breathless, director Richard Linklater’s irrepressible love letter to a moment in film history where suddenly anything seemed possible.

AFF’s partnership with Moviejuice, an Adelaide-based film collective dedicated to the screening, distribution, and celebration of alternative and experimental cinema, will see presentations of two adventurous Australian independent features – Christian Byers’ Death of an Undertakerand Adam C. Briggs and Sam Dixon’s A Grand Mockery.

AFF will present a comprehensive short film programs World Shorts, Australian Shorts, Animation Shorts, Queer Shorts and Made in SA, with a selection screening before some of the main program’s features.

AFF is honoured to administer the Bettison & James Award on behalf of the Jim Bettison and Helen James Foundation. The Award provides $50,000 in recognition of an exemplary and inspiring lifelong contribution by an individual working in any field.  This year’s recipient is Richard Leplastrier AO is one of Australia’s most respected and quietly influential architects, renowned for his deep engagement with landscape, craft, sustainable design and human connection with nature.  AFF will host a rare public forum and conversation with Richard Leplastrier, who is now well into his eighties, and a screening of the documentary Richard Leplastrier: Framing the View.

AFF also runs a range of initiatives that expand audiences and develop, support and engage the screen, visual arts and filmmaking community. Reflective Screen invites artists with a passion for popular culture and cinema to create new works thematically responding to a selection of AFF curated films. For AFF 2025 the invited artists and their moving images works are Abbey Murdoch 888-024and Chelsea Farquhar Severe remedies were necessary. This project has been developed in partnership with Adelaide Central School of Art and assisted by CreateSA. The 2025 mentor is Adelaide creative studio Washdog with special thanks to Andrew Purvis, Curator Adelaide Central Gallery.

The 2025 Expand Moving Image Commission 5 STEPS FOR BETTER LIVING, MAXIMUM GAINS AND MANIFESTING YOUR MOST OPTIMISED SELF!! Created by Nisa East, Anna Lindner and Yasemin Sabuncu, will be presented from October 16 – December 5 at the Samstag Museum of Art.  The work offers a satirical, critical reflection on the trends of commodified, masculine ‘wellness’ in times of existential crisis.  A preview and artist talk will be presented on 14 October. Expand is a collaboration between AFF, Samstag, Art Gallery of South Australia, Illuminate Adelaide and supported by Arts SA and the Balnaves Foundation. 

Mat Kesting, AFF CEO & Creative Director, said: “Every year we seek to curate a program that inspires us, provokes us, fills us with awe and with rage, makes us laugh, makes us cry, and reminds us that we are all part of this vast and diverse community of humans. I am very proud of the 2025 Adelaide Film Festival program and warmly invite all to share in experience of exploring the 120+ films in the program.”

Minister for the Arts, Andrea Michaels, said: “It’s fantastic to celebrate the program launch for the 2025 Adelaide Film Festival! The Adelaide Film Festival is now an annual celebration of the power of cinema following the Malinauskas Government’s additional $4 million investment.  It’s wonderful to see so many local films in the program, highlighting the strength of our local film industry, and I encourage everyone to get your tickets and enjoy the movies!”