The 73rd Melbourne International Film Festival (MIFF) is here to light up the dark winter nights once again – and now we know exactly what to expect.
Tonight’s official program launch revealed a globe-spanning, locally-rooted line-up of more than 275 screen works – including ten titles selected for this year’s Bright Horizons competition.
Running from 7 to 24 August, MIFF 2025 will sprawl across beloved venues like Hoyts, The Capitol, The Forum and ACMI before heading to regional outposts, and simultaneously reaching audiences nationwide via its MIFF Play streaming platform.
From SFF faves Fwends and Lesbian Space Princess, Cannes breakouts like The Chronology of Water to homegrown microbudget flicks like Pasa Faho, this year’s event promises a cinematic banquet of features, shorts, XR experiences, conversations, concerts, and more.
Artistic Director Al Cossar said the program represents MIFF’s deepest commitment yet to a ‘truly global and imaginative film culture’ – one that ‘stays grounded’ in Australian storytelling while embracing international cinema at its most daring.
‘MIFF returns to illuminate the dark depths of Melbourne winter with a globetrotting array of exceptional cinema, incredible experiences, and the biggest festival celebration of Australian filmmaking on the planet,’ he said.
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Among the buzziest events are two live-score spectacles: Julia Holter: The Passion of Joan of Arc and Parasite Live in Concert, the latter accompanied by the film’s original composer Jung Jae-il and performed by Orchestra Victoria.
Meanwhile, fans of music documentaries will no doubt turn out for the world premiere of Jimmy Barnes: Working Class Man, while cinephiles eager to catch the latest from genre-bending auteur Ari Aster can look forward to his new film Eddington.
MIFF’s 18-day celebration also includes panels, talks, and special events designed to deepen audience engagement. And once again, the MIFF Awards, presented by Penfolds, will spotlight top talent with over $300,000 in prizes.
The Bright Horizons Award, supported by the Victorian Government through VicScreen, offers a staggering $140,000 to one standout filmmaker in their first or second feature – making it the richest feature prize in the Southern Hemisphere. The rest of the festival’s award nominees will be announced later in July, with MIFF Shorts Awards and other honours to follow.
Victoria’s Minister for Creative Industries, Colin Brooks, welcomed MIFF’s return as a major cultural pillar.
‘MIFF is a highlight of our winter calendar, bringing together audiences across Melbourne and regional Victoria to see incredible local and international cinema,’ Brooks said.
‘The Allan Labor Government is proud to support Australia’s largest film festival and the MIFF Bright Horizons Award, which – alongside Victoria’s cutting-edge screen facilities, homegrown talent, world-class crew, and spectacular filming locations – cements our status as a global screen powerhouse.’
The star power will also be out in full force. Among the high-profile guests confirmed to attend MIFF 2025 are Stranger Things and Elvis star Dacre Montgomery, Emily Browning (American Gods), Sean Keenan (Glitch), musician-actor Marlon Williams, and writer-director-actor Mary Bronstein.
Bronstein will command the spotlight as MIFF’s Opening Night Gala film with her Australian premiere If I Had Legs I’d Kick You, also screening in Bright Horizons. A fiercely funny and painfully raw depiction of modern motherhood, the film stars Rose Byrne in what the Berlinale Jury called the best performance of the year. She’s joined by a cast including Danielle Macdonald, Christian Slater, A$AP Rocky and even late-night comedy icon Conan O’Brien.
ScreenHub: MIFF 2025: first look at this year’s stellar film lineup
MIFF’s mid-festival gems and Australian premieres
This year, seven new Australian features backed by the MIFF Premiere Fund will make their debut across the festival.
One of the most anticipated is Iron Winter, the latest from director Kasimir Burgess. Set among the sweeping steppes of Mongolia, the film follows two young horse herders as they come of age amid the beauty and brutality of East Asia’s remotest terrain.
Another standout is But Also John Clarke, an intimate documentary by Lorin Clarke about her father, the legendary satirist and national treasure. Promising ‘warmth, wit, and insight’, the film honours Clarke’s legacy while offering a rare glimpse into the man behind the deadpan.
Writer-director Kalu Oji brings his own debut, Pasa Faho, to the fold – a ‘tender yet unflinching’ story of suburban life in Melbourne’s migrant communities.
Nicholas Clifford’s One More Shot is poised to be a crowd-pleaser, too – a tequila-drenched Y2K-era party comedy with an impressive cast including Emily Browning, Sean Keenan, Ashley Zukerman and Aisha Dee.
In a fascinating left-field entry, Kristina Kraskov’s Spreadsheet Champions offers a documentary portrait of six youths navigating the unlikely world of competitive Microsoft Excel.
Rounding out the Premiere Fund slate is Careless, Sue Thomson’s playful and incisive look at Australia’s aged care system, and First Light, the feature debut of acclaimed photographer-turned-director James J. Robinson.
Among MIFF’s many other spotlight events, the Premiere With Purpose gala returns for a second year. The 2025 edition features the Australian premiere of Prime Minister, a powerful documentary by Michelle Walshe and Lindsay Utz chronicling the groundbreaking leadership of Jacinda Ardern.
For younger cinephiles – and those still young at heart – the Family Gala returns on Sunday 17 August with The Bad Guys 2, the rambunctious sequel to DreamWorks’ 2022 animated smash hit.
Bright Horizons: MIFF’s global lens on the future of cinema
Two previously announced titles lead the local Bright Horizons charge: Mary Bronstein’s If I Had Legs I’d Kick You, a blistering black comedy that opens the festival; and James J. Robinson’s introspective rural noir First Light, which marks a major leap forward for the celebrated visual artist.
Among the international slate is The Mysterious Gaze of the Flamingo, a haunting Chilean tale from Diego Céspedes, winner of the Un Certain Regard prize at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, and Urchin, actor Harris Dickinson’s (Babygirl) directorial debut.
From Thailand comes the singular A Useful Ghost, an uncanny feature debut from Ratchapoom Boonbunchachoke that manages to be both wryly comic and deeply moving. In the aftermath of a woman’s sudden death, her ghost reawakens – reincarnated in a vacuum cleaner.
Mascha Schilinski’s Sound of Falling arrives from Germany as a sensory plunge into desire, repression and liberation. Andrew Patterson, the director behind breakout indie The Vast of Night, returns with The Rivals of Amziah King, and Colombian director Simón Mesa Soto also joins the Bright Horizons lineup with A Poet.
This diverse lineup will be judged by a high-profile international jury, led by Aftersun director Charlotte Wells, returning to MIFF three years after her own debut screened in the inaugural Bright Horizons.
Also seated on the jury is IMDb founder and Executive Chairman Col Needham, Vietnamese–Australian author and screenwriter Nam Le (The Boat), and composer Caitlin Yeo.
Headliners: Cannes hits and new auteurs
Fresh from its Palme d’Or win, Jafar Panahi’s It Was Just an Accident brings the Iranian master back into the international spotlight with a taut, deeply personal story wrapped in layers of political allegory and existential reflection.
A24’s Sorry, Baby marks the directorial debut of writer-comedian Eva Victor, who delivers a sharp, self-aware dramedy that’s both laugh-out-loud funny and emotionally astute.
Then there’s Blue Moon, a portrait of Broadway lyricist Lorenz Hart by none other than Richard Linklater – who has two films in the Headliners section this year.
Linklater’s second entry, Nouvelle Vague, is a passion project decades in the making. Recreating the radical Paris of the early 1960s, the film is a cinephile’s dream: a black-and-white homage to Jean-Luc Godard and the artistic revolution he ignited.
Kristen Stewart’s directorial debut The Chronology of Water arrives with a tidal wave of buzz following its Cannes premiere. Based on Lidia Yuknavitch’s 2011 memoir, Stewart renders the author’s story with elliptical beauty – a sequence of memory fragments, pain and passion, realised with lyrical direction and a career-best performance from Imogen Poots.
Shih-Ching Tsou steps out of the shadow of long-time collaborator Sean Baker with Left-Handed Girl, a deeply personal debut set in Taipei’s underbelly, Kelly Reichardt returns with Josh O’Connor in The Mastermind, and Ukrainian provocateur Sergei Loznitsa brings his first narrative feature in years with Two Prosecutors.
And those are just the highlights! The full list of films showing at MIFF this year can be found below.
