2024 entries are closed! Check out our incredible festival here www.mdff.org.au. 2025 entries open from 6th June 2024 and to say thank you to filmmakers submissions are free for the first 10 days to celebrate our 10th anniversary next year! Good luck!
Now ranked as the #1 Melbourne Film Festival and Most Anticipated Melbourne Film Festival by Time Out for 2023! Google has ranked as 15th Best Documentary Film Festival in the world! Or the top 20 in the world!
We are very excited to announce that the Melbourne Documentary Film Festival has shown 7 documentaries that are eligible to compete for Best Feature Documentary at the 2024 Oscars – the highest number from any Australian Documentary Film Festival. It’s interesting to note that all of the documentaries selected are also Film Freeway Submissions!!
https://www.thewrap.com/documentaries-oscar-race-list-2023/
The festival is effortlessly diverse in a natural and authentic way and has a positive energy and vibe about it, as we are about acceptance. The festival has inspired over 30 people to visit Australia, inspired 5 people to start their own festivals and 6 filmmakers have felt inspired to make their own documentaries because of the festival – that’s leadership! Melbourne Documentary Film Festival authentic commitment to supporting and uplifting marginalized communities has elevated MDFF to be one of the great Australian Film Festivals!
We especially back mavericks, independent and creative thinkers pushing the documentary genre forward. The documentaries we play are simply discussion points to allow critical discussion, debate and independent thinking. It’s not to lecture, or virtue signal
Melbourne Documentary Film Festival was only event in the Southern Hemisphere to put on a screening event in solidarity for the SAG/AFTRA strike. Our position on the Middle East situation is release the hostages, and also ceasefire with no civilian, journalist, aid worker or children deaths on either side and peace in the region. Antisemitism and Islamophobia have no place at our festival.
From supporting local and hosting international Filmmakers, helping with World and Australian premieres, to feedback on documentaries, help with DCPs and Masterclasses, it is what we do!
Melbourne’s local doco fest. The Southern Hemisphere’s coolest documentary film festival!
Vivienne Westwood, King Crimson, George Gittoes, Tendechi Trucks, Penelope Spheeris, Jason Mamoa, Rosario Dawson, A-Ha, Eric Roberts, Mel Brooks, Daniel Day-Lewis, Frank Miller, Mike Mignola, Guillermo Del Toro, Robert Fripp, Paton Oswalt, Nichola Meyer, John Hiatt, Jerry Douglas, In Hearts Wake, Paul Mcgann, Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson, Banksy, Octavia Spencer, Liza Minelli, Leon Mackenzie, Marlee Matlin, Declan Kelly, Lyle Lovett, Dolly Parton, Emmylou Harris, Tony Barry and that’s just the 7th edition.
Melbourne Documentary Film Festival is an indie festival providing support and encouragement and helping propel filmmakers onto Netflix, SBS, ABC or getting their own limited theatrical run at the cinema, through their own talents, hard work and determination!
Melbourne Documentary Film Festival is the in-house documentary film festival for Cinema Nova (Australia’s Best Independent Cinema 2023) the largest independent cinema in the Southern Hemisphere. Join us on the Purple carpet at the Purple Palace, or on the jumbo screen in Federation Square! We give filmmakers great opportunities, what you do with these opportunities is up to you!
For more information, visit Melbourne Documentary Film Festival
