In the heart of Brisbane’s CBD sits a hole in the ground where a grand, greatly beloved cinema delighted audiences for more than 80 years. Every city mightn’t still wear the visible scar of losing a cultural icon, as Queensland’s capital has since The Regent Theatre’s demolition in 2011 and 2012, but few places have been spared such losses.
At the centre of Brisbane’s events calendar for 2026 now sits another glaring gap, however, thanks to the cancellation of the Brisbane International Film Festival – which called The Regent home for its initial 18 years, snaking lines down the Queen Street Mall and all.
BIFF will next return in 2027, Screen Queensland advised in its announcement about the festival’s ‘new approach’ (read: scrapping 2026’s event, axing its planned organisers, ditching the Queensland Government’s eight-year tender-driven approach to licensing out the festival’s delivery to third parties, and rethinking what BIFF looks like in the future).
But Brisbane film lovers are allowed to feel heartbroken – angry, too, that chaos keeps surrounding the event, and that mothballing it keeps proving a go-to option. This is the third time in 12 years that Queensland capital’s major annual city-wide film festival has been cancelled, be it BIFF or the Brisbane Asia Pacific Film Festival, which replaced BIFF between 2014 and 2016.
2026 is also now the first year since 1992, when BIFF debuted, that neither BIFF nor BAPFF will light up Brisbane’s silver screens.
BIFF and film in Brisbane – quick links
Only in Brisbane
If BIFF hadn’t been supplanted for three years by a short-lived focus on Asia Pacific cinema (and the attempt to ingratiate the Queensland-hosted, largely industry-centric Asia Pacific Screen Awards with audiences), then the festival would be revelling in 35-year celebrations in 2026. While less than half the age of both Sydney Film Festival and Melbourne International Film Festival, it’d nonetheless be notching up a noteworthy run.
Instead, Brisbane patrons are left wanting – for the event that’ll be absent this year, for the movies that’ll bypass the city’s big screens as a result, for the history interrupted and milestones thwarted by shortsighted government decisions, and for the respect that every major film festival deserves from its powers that be.
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If emphasising the vast chasm between BIFF and its interstate counterparts was one of the aims, revealing that the festival will sit out this year couldn’t have been better timed.
The news arrived as SFF was in the thick of another box-office record-breaking year. It was also mere days before MIFF unveiled its first titles for 2026, just weeks after Revelation Perth International Film Festival dropped its full line-up for the year, and less than a month after Adelaide Film Festival showcased Australian filmmaking in Cannes, ahead of its own October dates.
In Sydney and Melbourne in particular, it is unthinkable that, a pandemic and associated lockdowns aside, either SFF or MIFF might not take place every single year.
Sydney Film Festival and Melbourne International Film Festival haven’t been nicknamed ‘cinephile Christmas’ purely out of love or due to the cinematic gifts they always bring, but because they’re that reliable a fixture of movie obsessives’ annual routines.
In Brisbane, that level of confidence hasn’t existed for more than a decade. BIFF should also be the pinnacle of its city’s and state’s cinemagoing calendar every year, but keeps being swept up in a sea of uncertainty, including when and where the festival is happening, who is at the helm, and whether there’ll even be a BIFF at all.
BIFF: devastatingly familiar decision
Screen Queensland clearly recognises this, hence the move to stop licensing out the festival and reimagine how BIFF is handled. News of BIFF’s 2026 hiatus came couched with words such as ‘paused’, ‘change’ and ‘evolve’, plus phrases like ‘new approach’ and ‘new delivery model’.
‘The opportunity to redesign the operating model for BIFF was informed by extensive sector feedback,’ a Screen Queensland spokesperson told ScreenHub. ‘The decision to pause this year’s program to allow us time to focus on the future is an operational decision, not one based on budget, and this important work is underway.’
Still, it remains that wiping the Brisbane International Film Festival off the agenda, even if just for a year this time, has once more been deemed acceptable.
All the worthy goals and positive angles in the world – all the trumpeting of a ‘change in direction’ for the event’s 2027 comeback, in aid of ‘a future-focused festival that is specific to Brisbane and reflective of the incredible momentum across Queensland’s thriving screen sector’ – also can’t hide the fact that ditching BIFF for 2026 sparks a horrific case of déjà vu.
It isn’t just that Brisbane has been here before and more than once, making this development devastatingly familiar. It’s not only that one of those cancellations, in favour of BAPFF, was gleefully touted as permanent, with shuttering a popular festival proudly championed as a step forward, either.
It’s that, regardless of the intentions or the time needed ‘to lay the foundations for a new operating model’, BIFF’s devotees have already seen what eventuates when a state of flux is the festival’s chief constant.
Dating back to before its BAPFF-superseding-BIFF phase – which came to an end even after the new event’s Asia Pacific-focused programming added more European movies to its curatorial mix to help boost attendance – the festival will now have undergone eight significant revamps in the 16 years since inaugural Artistic Director Anne Démy-Geroe departed.
No single party – be it an Artistic Director-slash-Head of Screen Culture employed within Screen Queensland, which organised and ran BIFF pre-2014, including when it was formerly known as the Pacific Film and Television Commission; or an outside entity such as 2017 partner Palace Cinemas, 2018 to 2020 partner the Gallery of Modern Art, 2021 to 2024 partner Film Fantastic, or 2025’s For Film’s Sake – has held the reins for more than four events over that time.
And no matter how it is badged at any given point, such frequent shifts mean that BIFF is basically starting all over again each time it resets.
BIFF: the challenging task of starting again
It isn’t easy to bring fresh eyes to an existing festival at the best of times, but it’s another challenge again to be tasked with virtually rebuilding it while also introducing considerable changes to audiences, whether with dates, duration, venues, vision, focus or all of the above. With each different team that has called the shots from 2010 onwards, BIFF has indeed felt new every time.
With every makeover comes the not-at-all-minor hurdle of enticing back patrons – selling them on the festival’s new identity, yes, but also re-establishing attending BIFF as an annual habit. When so much about a film festival differs within the space of mere years, where it is held and the time of year among them, any sense of tradition with audiences disappears as well.
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Veterans of Sydney and Melbourne’s film festivals might block out their diaries without fail each year. Based on crowd sizes, all but BIFF’s most dedicated patrons have been losing that urge. In 2025, it didn’t help that Brisbane’s dates for the year, and its condensed four-day span in the Christmas party-heavy and storm-saturated timing of late-November, were revealed only a month out.
At least in the past – when the festival sat with Screen Queensland under the Head of Screen Culture Richard Moore from 2010 to 2012, and also during GOMA’s stint with Australian Cinematheque Curatorial Manager Amanda Slack-Smith in charge, and when longstanding Gold Coast Film Festival organisers Film Fantastic took on BIFF – the groups overseeing the event had a minimum of three festivals to tackle the job, get patrons along for their version of the BIFF ride, and grow a sense of stability.
Whatever the successes and battles of each iteration, just as BIFF started to seem like it had carved out a new groove and momentum, and was reassembling a committed, year-in-year-out audience for its latest guise, a new round of change has swept in – an inbuilt feature of putting the festival out for tender every few years since 2017.
A new festival? Film lovers will believe it when they see it
BIFF’s most recent event – the first under the Sophie Mathisen-led, activism-focused organisation For Film’s Sake – saw what’s now become the usual pattern play out. Again, the 2025 festival’s lack of advance notice for audiences, shortened run and late-in-the-year berth – all due to For Film’s Sake having just 11 weeks to deliver the festival – were far from ideal. But the experience for patrons otherwise, in terms of navigating yet another big change of direction and delivery partner, was comparable to every other instance such shifts have occurred.
Despite winning the tender for three years and planning to expand the festival in 2026 with a full year of preparation behind them, For Film’s Sake is no longer involved in BIFF. Screen Queensland is instead ‘moving away from the current licensing model to lead a coalition of key partners and stakeholders to co-design’ what comes next, seeking ‘to ensure an enduring and successful event for decades to come’.
With its ingrained changes and chaos, the licensing approach hasn’t worked as a long-term strategy. That was destined to be the case; a model that sends BIFF back to square one every three or so years can hardly be expected to achieve growth or excite film aficionados.
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Brisbane deserves better, obviously. The love for BIFF, and for showcasing the best in international cinema to Brisbane audiences, remained firm when it was first cancelled and replaced by BAPFF. The independent, smaller-scale Queensland Film Festival then sprang up in 2015 to help fill the void, to a warm response.
There’s no reason why a new BIFF that isn’t just devoted to the same aim, but to constructing a lasting future for the festival complete with the benefit of time and continuity to genuinely make good on that promise, can’t reignite that passion.
Mentioned in Screen Queensland’s announcement, though, as it was when For Film’s Sake won the tender, is a potential omen: the 2032 Olympic and Paralympic Games.
Brisbane deserves a major annual film festival irrespective of whether it is hosting a global sporting event in six years. The Olympics shouldn’t be the main motivation for finally giving BIFF the commitment to longevity and ongoing resourcing that it needs.
Indeed, ask Brisbanites about the 2032 Games and the reply from many is likely the same as being asked if The Regent might ever be more than an empty hole in the ground: ‘I’ll believe it when I see it.’
Here’s hoping that we can truly believe that a resurrected BIFF will return to being the yearly film festival that Brisbane deserves – and that we’ll actually see it.
