It’s a great year in Australian cinema when whittling down the list of the best films of the year involves frantic, heartbreaking decisions. But for what it’s worth, here are the 10 that I think are a cut above, drawing from festivals, streaming and general release titles.
Best Australian films of 2025 – quick links
The Golden Spurtle
How on earth did Constantine Costi, an Australian director of opera, wind up following a Sydney taco chef to the Southern Highlands to film a documentary about competitive porridge-making? The answers aren’t included in this brimful of brilliance but The Golden Spurtle is a documentary that thrums with community spirit and kooky characters who feel like they’ve walked out of a Wes Anderson movie, despite being decidedly real. The inherent poetry of the Scottish spirit is carried into a film that brings the world to a village of abundant charm.
But Also John Clarke
It’s tough to craft a compelling documentary about an adored figure without drifting into hagiography, perhaps even more so if the subject is your father. Melbourne filmmaker Lorin Clarke successfully navigates this quagmire with her fact-packed, irrepressibly funny documentary about arguably our finest Kiwi import, the much-mourned, sparkling-eyed satirist John Clarke.
Imbued with his cheeky glint and stacked with insights from the likes of Sam Neil, Jana Wendt and Andrew Denton, But Also John Clarke is gorgeous.
The Serpent’s Skin
Getting a film up is hard, even tougher in Australia. So bravo to those with punk spirit making it any which way. Proud trans filmmaker Alice Maio Mackay recalls the likes of Reiner Werner Fassbinder with her fiercely DIY approach, pumping out subversive horror at a cracking rate. This latest crowd-funded offering perfects the form, casting Vice Principals lead Alexandra McVicker as a powerful telepath whose dreamy connection to Avalon Fast’s similarly gifted tattooist, Gen, burns with bountiful hope.
Read: Alice Maio Mackay interview – on The Serpent’s Skin and finding trans power in horror
Death of an Undertaker
Bump star Christian Byers joins the likes of Mackay and A Grand Mockery directors Adam C Briggs and Sam Dixon in this rebooted New Wave, going their own way without major funding. His soulful, reality-blurring microbudget movie is set in a real Sydney funeral parlour and saw him casting himself alongside the parlor’s legit undertakers. Death of an Undertaker was shot over several years, Boyhood-style. Anchoring it with a mortality-musing central performance as a young man adrift, Byers proves he has the chops to go far beyond the usual. Watch the trailer.
Jimpa
With the formally daring 52 Tuesdays, South Australian filmmaker Sophie Hyde demonstrated impressive nuance in observing shades of queer identity. That generous care shines through Jimpa, her latest offering, which takes a big-picture look at intergenerational politics through the intimate lens of one quirky family.
Olivia Colman is sublime as ever as a conflict-averse acting coach, caught between her firebrand father (John Lithgow) and her non-binary teenager (Aud Mason-Hyde), delivering a gentle portrait of love.
Pasa Faho
Turbulent families are a throughline this year, with Melbourne filmmaker Kalu Oji’s richly layered debut feature embracing the theme wholeheartedly.
Comedian Okey Bakassi is note-perfect as a struggling shoe salesman who has to contend with more than keeping the lights on when his estranged son (Tyson Palmer) moves back in. Butting heads over the relevance of their shared Igbo (Nigerian) culture and the worth of a goat’s life, they find a middle ground that works in a film that’s centred on community. Watch the trailer.
Birthright
It’s not straightforward, translating staginess onto the big screen. But West Australian playwright Zoe Pepper makes it look too damn easy, as does her magnificent cast, in this tight chamber piece and pitch-black laceration of the purposefully manufactured housing affordability crisis. Travis Jeffery and Maria Angelico are chaotic-good as 30-somethings desperately out of work (and home) while expecting a baby, matched by Linda Cropper and Michael Hurst’s savage turns as callous boomers who do not want to give an inch. Watch the trailer.
Lesbian Space Princess
Anarchic queer joy personified, Emma Hough Hobbs and Leela Varghese’s Berlinale Teddy Award-winner is the funniest Australian film of the year, and quite possibly any 2025 film. The first animated feature from South Australia, it’s a frothing fabulous delight following introverted Princess Saira (The Pitt star Shabana Azeez) and her linguistically colourful quest to rescue her ex, the bounty hunter Kiki (Bernie Van Tiel), from the clutches of Aunty Donna’s too-adorkable-to-be-loathsome Straight White Maliens.
First Light
In the quiet flicker of candlelight stirring the shadows of a rundown convent, Australian-Filipino filmmaker James J Robinson’s astonishingly accomplished debut feature blazes bright. Featuring veteran Filipino star Ruby Ruiz as a fearless nun who takes on corrupt local authorities to get to the truth of a construction industry fatality, her quiet strength grounds this luminous feature in this mortal coil whilst also tackling the metaphysical through the church’s failings and a crisis of faith from an also ace Kare Adea’s novice.
Bring Her Back
Danny and Michael Philippou’s Sundance breakthrough Talk to Me stunned the world, but second-album syndrome can be tough. Not so with Bring Her Back, an unforgettably bleak reckoning with the way grief can monstrously warp a lost soul. Sally Hawkins should be up for the Oscar for her turn as a foster carer whose inability to let go endangers the lives of her wards, played with impressive determination by Billy Barratt, Sora Wong and Jonah Wren Philips. Devastatingly good stuff that will haunt you.
Honourable mentions
- Beast of War
- Careless
- Dangerous Animals
- Journey Home, David Gulpilil
- One More Shot
- Penny Lane is Dead
- Spreadsheet Champions
- Zombucha!
