The 72nd Sydney Film Festival program has been announced, with a line-up that sees 15 films direct from the Cannes Film Festival, including Jafar Panahi’s It Was Just an Accident and Kelly Reichardt’s 1970s-set art heist drama The Mastermind.
Other SFF 2025 highlights include The Life of Chuck starring Tom Hiddleston; debut Australian director Amy Wang’s SXSW-winning satire Slanted; Sundance comedy hit Twinless; the sweeping queer romance On Swift Horses with Daisy Edgar-Jones and Jacob Elordi; and Dreams (Sex Love), winner of the Berlinale Golden Bear.
SFF 2025 will present 201 films from 70 countries, including 17 World Premieres, six international premieres and 137 Australian Premieres. This year also sees the addition of the Sydney Opera House as a screening venue, joining the State Theatre and cinemas across the city:
Key highlights from the SFF 2025 program:
SFF quick links
SFF: Opening Night Film
SFF 2025 will open with the Australian Premiere of Together, written and directed by Australian filmmaker Michael Shanks and starring Alison Brie and Dave Franco. The breakout hit of Sundance, this bold new Australian feature that blends domestic drama with a devilishly supernatural twist, offering an off-the-wall and twisted take on codependency.
Writer and director Michael Shanks will attend Opening Night to present the film.
SFF: Official Competition
ScreenHub: Sydney Film Festival reveals its 2025 Official Competition jury
The Official Competition sees $60,000 awarded each year to the most ‘audacious, cutting-edge and courageous’ film.
SFF 2025 retrospective focus Jafar Panahbrings a new title, It Was Just an Accident, which reimagines the Iranian road movie; while Kelly Reichardt’s The Mastermind brings her unique sensibility to a 1970s-set art heist starring Josh O’Connor and Alana Haim.
Berlinale Golden Bear-winner Carla Simón returns with Romería, a mesmerising drama blending family history and breathtaking fantasy, and Sydney Film Prize-winning filmmaker Kleber Mendonça Filho delivers the rousing and tense political thriller The Secret Agent, starring Wagner Moura.
Straight from Cannes, Icelandic auteur Hlynur Pálmason follows Godland (SFF 2022) with The Love That Remains, a tender and surprising portrait of a family navigating separation; Christian Petzold reunites with Paula Beer in Mirrors No. 3, an intrigue-filled, intimate drama exploring loss, healing and the pull of the past; and then there’s Akinola Davies Jr.’s debut My Father’s Shadow, a poetic coming-of-age drama set during Nigeria’s political upheaval in 1993.
Direct from Cannes Directors’ Fortnight is Eva Victor’s Sorry, Baby, a witty and vulnerable dramedy about trauma, healing and friendship.
Internationally awarded films in competition at SFF include Gabriel Mascaro’s Berlinale Grand Jury Prize-winning The Blue Trail, a psychedelic, anti-authoritarian fable set in the Amazon; and Sundance Audience Award-winner DJ Ahmet, a charming coming-of-age story about tradition, dance music and first love in North Macedonia.
Also competing is All That’s Left of You, a moving epic from Cherien Dabis (Amreeka, SFF 2009) that chronicles a Palestinian family’s hopes and traumas over seven decades, which premiered at Sundance.
Opening Night Film Together will also screen in competition at the 2025 Festival.
The winner of the Sydney Film Prize will be announced at the Festival’s Closing Night Gala on Sunday 15 June.
SFF: Documentary Australia Award
Ten new Australian documentaries will compete at SFF for the 2025 Documentary Australia Award, with a $20,000 cash prize presented to the winner. The prize also makes the winning film eligible for Academy Award consideration.
World Premieres include Floodland, Jordan Giusti’s deeply moving portrait of a flood-affected community in Lismore, Australia’s most disaster-prone postcode; Joh: Last King of Queensland, Kriv Stenders’ captivating portrait of controversial Queensland Premier Joh Bjelke-Petersen; Journey Home, David Gulpilil, a powerful and intimate record of the renowned Indigenous actor’s final journey to his Homeland to be laid to rest; The Raftsmen, Chadden Hunter’s high-seas yarn revisiting a daring 1970s raft voyage across the Pacific; and Yurlu | Country, Yaara Bou Melhem’s deeply personal portrait of Elder Maitland Parker’s environmental and cultural fight for his Wittenoom homeland.
Australian Premieres in competition include Deeper, Jennifer Peedom and Alex Barry’s high-stakes chronicle of Thai cave rescue hero Dr Richard ‘Harry’ Harris’s attempt to achieve the world’s deepest cave dive; and The Golden Spurtle, Sydney based Constantine Costi’s charming and hilarious portrait of the World Porridge Making Championship in the Scottish Highlands.
Also in the running are The Wolves Always Come at Night, Gabrielle Brady’s story of a Mongolian family forced to abandon their nomadic life; Songs Inside, where female prisoners find healing through a unique music program; and Ellis Park, Justin Kurzel’s debut documentary, about musician Warren Ellis and his passionate work rescuing animals in Sumatra.
SFF: Special Presentations of the State
The State Theatre sets the stage for Sydney Film Festival’s biggest nights, with red carpet premieres, award-winning films, star-studded line-ups, and dazzling special events.
Star-led features include Richard Linklater’s Blue Moon, starring Ethan Hawke, Margaret Qualley and Andrew Scott in a hilarious chamber piece set against the backdrop of musical theatre; Michel Franco’s Dreams, featuring Jessica Chastain as a wealthy philanthropist whose passionate affair with a Mexican dancer challenges her carefully curated life; The Ballad of Wallis Island, a charming comedy with Carey Mulligan about the musical reunion of two estranged former lovers; and Jodie Foster heads a stellar cast in Vie Privée, a Cannes-selected, gently comic murder mystery set in Paris.
Familiar faces also feature in Kevin Macdonald’s documentary One to One: John & Yoko, which brings John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s historic 1972 Madison Square Garden concert vividly to life.
Australian award-winners shine with two bold new features: Slanted, debut Australian director Amy Wang’s provocative, SXSW-winning satire on racial identity and belonging; and Lesbian Space Princess, a riotous, Berlin Teddy Award-winning animated adventure following an introverted lesbian princess on an inter-gay-lactic rescue mission.
From New Zealand, two deeply personal stories will screen: Prime Minister, an intimate portrait of Jacinda Ardern’s transformative leadership, and the World Premiere of Pike River, the powerful true story of two women’s fight for justice after New Zealand’s deadliest modern mining disaster, starring Melanie Lynskey.
Direct from Cannes, Raoul Peck’s Orwell: 2+2=5 offers a gripping meditation on the enduring relevance of George Orwell’s vision; and Robin Campillo’s Enzo, the Opening Film of Cannes Directors’ Fortnight, captures a tender coming-of-age story set against the backdrop of war and migration.
Rounding out the section is Twinless, a hilarious and unpredictable queer bromance starring Dylan O’Brien and James Sweeney, fresh from delighting audiences at Sundance.
ScreenHub: Jafar Panahi’s ‘bold filmmaking’ to be celebrated at Sydney Film Festival 2025
SFF: Feature Films
Australian features include Death of an Undertaker, having its World Premiere at SFF. This debut from actor-turned-director Christian Byers is set in a real Leichhardt funeral parlour and stars Byers as a fragile part-time worker unravelling on the brink of homelessness.
Other local productions having their Australian Premieres: Birthright, Zoe Pepper’s biting satire about a disillusioned generation and the housing crisis; Went Up the Hill, a gothic tale of grief and possession starring Vicky Krieps and Dacre Montgomery; and Fwends, Sophie Somerville’s Berlinale award-winning ode to messy, modern friendship.
Dreams (Sex Love), was the Golden Bear winner at Berlinale 2025, and is a potent, nuanced study of forbidden desire and creative awakening by Dag Johan Haugerud.
Also screening is Love, the second in Haugerud’s thematic trilogy, a Venice competition selection that observes two Oslo singles – a straight urologist and a gay nurse – navigating vastly different but equally poignant paths to connection.
This year’s award-winning highlights include Alpha., a chilling father-son social drama set in the Swiss Alps, winner of the Europa Cinemas Label Award at Venice; The Things You Kill, a surreal Turkish psychological thriller about family secrets, awarded Best Director at Sundance; and One of Those Days When Hemme Dies, a wry, lyrical tale of revenge amid sun-dried tomatoes, which earned the Special Jury Prize at Venice.
Come Closer is a Tribeca Viewpoints Award-winner about a woman plunged into grief and obsession after her brother’s death. Kontinental ’25, Radu Jude’s acerbic satire, took out a major prize at Berlinale for its darkly funny exploration of guilt and social complicity.
The Mohican, a Corsican-set contemporary western about land rights and resistance, won the Audience Award at Thessaloniki.
And Moon, Kurdwin Ayub’s culture-clash thriller about an Austrian MMA fighter in Jordan, received Locarno’s Special Jury Prize.
From Berlinale 2025 comes The Heart is a Muscle, in which a South African father, conditioned by a violent past, commits a terrible act while searching for his missing son, and Islands, where a luxury island resort is the setting for a gripping psychosexual mystery, by Jan-Ole Gerster.
Late Shift is a high-stakes hospital drama set over a single night on a hospital ward on the brink of a meltdown, a hit when it premiered at Berlinale. Ameer Fakher Eldin’s Yunan, is an evocative drama about a world-weary author who retreats to a far-flung island.
Having screened in competition in Berlin, What Does That Nature Say to You by Korean indie auteur Hong Sang-soo is a witty drama following an artist who finally meets his girlfriend’s family.
Olmo is a vibrant coming-of-age tale about a 14-year-old in 1979 New Mexico sneaking away from his struggling family to attend a party. BLKNWS: Terms & Conditions, from Kahlil Joseph (frequent collaborator with Beyoncé and Kendrick Lamar), is a genre-defying mixtape blending Black history, Afro-futurism, archival media and performance in dazzling, cerebral layers.
Among the diverse selection of bold international cinema in this year’s program is Happyend, a politically charged story of teenage rebellion under surveillance in near-future Tokyo, and Harvest, Athina Rachel Tsangari’s gritty Middle Ages parable starring Caleb Landry Jones.
Female friendship takes centre stage in January 2, a minimalist road movie about fresh starts, while Nineteen offers a spirited coming-of-age odyssey produced by Luca Guadagnino.
Stories of mystery and suspense unfold in Pooja, Sir, where an atypically female cop investigates the abduction of two boys in a Nepali border town, and Stranger Eyes, the first Singaporean film to screen in competition at Venice – a twist-filled thriller about a grieving couple who receive anonymous surveillance footage after their baby goes missing.
To Kill a Mongolian Horse delivers a powerful exploration of masculinity and cultural crisis, inspired by the lead actor’s real life as a Mongolian horseback performer.
Global perspectives on motherhood and caregiving emerge in The Mother and the Bear, a quirky comedy about an overzealous Korean mother matchmaking her comatose daughter; Daughter’s Daughter, a tender Taiwanese drama led by Sylvia Chang; and Saba, a Dhaka-set portrait of sacrifice and family.
In The Legend of the Vagabond Queen of Lagos, a mother living in a Lagos shantytown uncovers a stash of corrupt money worth millions, sparking a wild and unexpected journey. Two standouts are the Korean chilling psychological drama Somebody, centred on maternal trauma and starring K-pop icon Kwon Yuri; and State of Statelessness, the first-ever Tibetan-language anthology, weaving four poignant stories of Tibetans living in exile.
The President’s Cake, a Cannes Directors’ Fortnight selection, is a rare film from Iraq and a humorous and touching debut about a young Iraqi girl’s mandated mission to bake a cake for her class on Saddam Hussein’s birthday. On Becoming a Guinea Fowl, a Cannes-selected drama from director Rungano Nyoni, sees a Zambian family confront hard truths following the death of a relative.
Star-studded features include Mike Flanagan’s The Life of Chuck, a poignant sci-fi drama starring Tom Hiddleston, based on a Stephen King novella; The Friend, a warm dramedy with Naomi Watts and Bill Murray based on the popular book by Sigrid Nunez; On Swift Horses, a sweeping queer 1950s romance featuring Daisy Edgar-Jones and Jacob Elordi; Bring Them Down, a powerful Irish thriller with Barry Keoghan; and The End, Joshua Oppenheimer’s daring narrative debut – a dystopian musical starring Tilda Swinton and Michael Shannon.
Other standout selections include Ciao Bambino, a Naples-set debut in which a teenage boy is tasked with protecting a sex worker; and Eighty Plus, a wry and warm-hearted return by Yugoslav New Wave icon Želimir Žilnik, about a travelling musician returning to Serbia to reclaim a family property. Lurker, the feature debut of TV writer-producer Alex Russell, is a tense, slow-burn Hollywood psychodrama about obsession and fandom.
Spirit World stars Catherine Deneuve in a gently supernatural road movie about a French singer who dies while touring Japan and finds herself guided in the afterlife by a devoted fan. Twelve Moons is a visually stunning drama tracing a middle-class architect’s descent into addiction and turmoil following a shattering personal loss, while Tiger’s Pond is a haunting Indian thriller that examines caste, superstition and political manipulation in a remote village.
Finally, Mr. Burton tells the remarkable true story of legendary Welsh actor Richard Burton’s formative years, with Toby Jones portraying the teacher who helped him find his voice.
SFF: Classics Restored
The SFF Classics Restored program brings five iconic films back to the big screen, newly remastered and ready to be rediscovered – from Australian cult favourites to visionary international works.
Ghost in the Shell director Mamoru Oshii’s early cult anime Angel’s Egg, long unavailable and newly restored in 4K, returns to mesmerise audiences with its surreal visuals and haunting allegory.
Peter Brook’s The Mahabharata, adapted from his acclaimed stage production, transforms the ancient Indian epic into a sweeping cinematic experience. Restored after years of limited access, it’s a rare opportunity to see a legendary work of world cinema.
David Caesar’s Mullet, starring Ben Mendelsohn, is a sharply observed portrait of small-town tensions, following a prodigal son whose return stirs old resentments.
Also screening is Muriel’s Wedding, PJ Hogan’s joyous ode to outsiders and ABBA dreams, celebrating 30 years; and Somersault, Cate Shortland’s award-winning debut about longing, youth and emotional awakening in regional NSW.
Sydney Film Festival runs from 4-15 June 2025. The full 2025 program can be found on the SFF website.
