Not Only Fred Dagg But Also John Clarke.

Melbourne International Film Festival (MIFF) proudly returns to Naarm and surrounds to bring some of the most talked about films arriving hot from Cannes, Berlin, Sundance and across the globe. Across 18 days of bold programming, this year’s program is brimming with original storytelling that will ask audiences to Look Closer as the much-loved festival lights up Melbourne this winter for its 73rd edition.

Announcing 26 of its first films and unmissable events, MIFF offers a First Glance at its 2025 program which includes seven MIFF Premiere Fund titles, 17 international and local highlights and two special events – many of which will screen for the first time in Australia.

Sharing a glimpse at the festival’s 2025 program, MIFF Artistic Director Al Cossar, said: “It all starts here – the full MIFF 2025 program is soon to arrive; set to be a world-ranging, celebratory and all-out extraordinary collection of films. I’m excited to share some of our first announcement of titles, and incredible highlights, of this year’s MIFF: beloved auteurs, festival blockbusters, the best of new Australian filmmaking, alongside the incredibly special and absolutely unmissable live-score cinema event, Julia Holter: The Passion of Joan of Arc. You’ll want to look closer at MIFF’s First Glance – there is so much to see, and so much more to come!”

Iron Winter.

Outside of metro Melbourne, the MIFF Regional showcase expands its tour across festival weekends 15–17 and 22–24 August with venues in Bendigo, Ballarat, Castlemaine, Morwell, Geelong, Rosebud, Sale and Shepparton – ready to screen some of the festival’s biggest and much-loved titles, supported by VicScreen.

MIFF’s digital offering also returns from 15–31 August for 18 days and continues one week after the festival wraps up – ensuring that cinema-lovers across Australia can catch films beyond the in-cinema season. MIFF Online features a limited suite of festival films and free short films available on demand via ACMI’s dedicated online streaming platform, Cinema 3.

The annual MIFF Awards will also return on Saturday 23 August, celebrating cinematic excellence and talent with one of the world’s most significant filmmaking prize pools – including the prestigious $140,000 Bright Horizons Award, supported by the Victorian Government through VicScreen.

The full MIFF 2025 program including the complete Bright Horizons Competition lineup will be unveiled Thursday 10 July with category nominees and juries for the MIFF Awards to be announced in late July.

MIFF PREMIERE FUND

The 2025 MIFF Premiere Fund lineup champions outstanding Australian filmmaking, groundbreaking ideas, and spotlights unique Australian creatives within our local filmmaking industry.

Providing co-funding for all-new Australian feature films which later debut at the festival, the commissioning fund aims to reinforce MIFF’s relationship with Australian filmmakers in a bid to foster a variety of exciting new voices for festival audiences. Entering its second decade, the MIFF Premiere Fund proudly continues to back diverse local perspectives.

One More Shot.

Throwing it back to Y2K, an end-of-millennium house party becomes an endless, tequila-fuelled time loop in One More Shot, an ingenious debut feature by Melbourne director Nicholas Clifford. Starring a standout lineup of Australian talent – Emily Browning (God Help the Girl, MIFF 2014), Sean Keenan (Nitram, MIFF 2021), Ashley Zukerman (In Vitro, MIFF 2024), Aisha Dee (Sissy, MIFF 2022) and Elias Anton (Of an Age, MIFF 2022) – the film is packed with non-stop 90s hits and showing audiences that some nights out are better left in the rear-view mirror.

Shot in a verdant mountainous landscape in northern Luzon, First Light is the feature debut by celebrated Filipino-Australian photographer James J. Robinson, evoking Ingmar Bergman’s Winter Light and Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s Black Narcissus through its masterfully composed images and thought-provoking interrogation of faith. Starring veteran Filipina actor Ruby Ruiz and industry legend Maricel Soriano, First Light is a slow-burn crime drama and sensory meditation on the structures of faith, power and corruption.

Suspenseful and heartwarming, Spreadsheet Champions captures the challenge of performing at an elite level while also navigating the volatile, identity-forming time of adolescence. Previously announced as part of MIFF Schools, Australian filmmaker Kristina Kraskov crafts an observational feature documentary charting six young people from around the globe as they channel their dreams into a competition with a difference: a test of their elite mastery of Microsoft Excel.

Starring beloved Nigerian stand-up comedian Okey Bakassi and impressive young actor Tyson Palmer, playing as father and son, Pasa Faho by Australian director Kalu Oji presents a quintessentially Melbourne tale of life in a migrant community. A down-to-earth, moving and gently funny portrait of suburban African-Australian life, the debut feature is a vibrant tribute to life in the suburbs, a cinematically underrepresented local community, and to how, no matter where we’re from, we all ultimately constitute parts of a whole.

Iron Winter is the latest mesmerising documentary from Kasimir Burgess (Franklin, MIFF 2022) capturing a fading tradition at the intersection of rural life and modern technology. Beautifully shot for the big screen, the film brings to the screen the real-life story of camaraderie and survival, opening an intimate window into the icy Mongolian steppes – one of the world’s most breathtaking and forbidding environments – as well as the immediate threats posed by catastrophic climate change.

Careless.

Intimately produced by his daughter Lorin Clarke, Not Only Fred Dagg But Also John Clarke is a deeply personal documentary into a legend of the antipodean screen and tells the story of defining comedic voice, John Clarke. In a tribute to the disruptive power of creativity, the film comprises a remarkable series of recorded conversations between John and Lorin, woven together with personal anecdotes, a rich television archive, tales from international comedy greats and riches from more than 200 boxes of Clarke’s work and letters.

Directed by award-winning filmmaker Sue Thomson (The Coming Back Out Ball Movie, MIFF 2018 Closing Night Gala; Under Cover, MIFF 2022), Careless is a funny, moving and energetic exploration that follows elderly people’s fight to grow old their way. Through observational footage, archival materials, home movies and interviews, the documentary issues a timely and powerful response to a hidden crisis.

MIFF SCHOOLS

As announced last month, MIFF Schools returns in 2025 to present high-quality, diverse films in languages including French, Mandarin, Japanese, Italian, German and English, and aligns with several Victorian Curriculum learning areas and capabilities. Screenings will be held during the festival period and will be complemented with free Professional Learning webinars delivered by MIFF’s film-analysis expert, Dr Josh Nelson.

FIRST GLANCE AUSTRALIAN TITLES

Debuting at Berlinale, Fwends by Accelerator Lab alum Sophie Somerville (linda 4 eva, MIFF 2023) makes its Victorian Premiere this MIFF, as is right and proper for any film so indebted to the city’s bluestone-cobbled laneways. Estranged mates get lost in Melbourne in this full-of-feels feature debut – a paean to young-adult friendship that’s a must-watch for anyone who loves the city, or might have lived here just a little too long.

Following his passing, legendary Yolngu actor David Gulpilil is brought back to his home country in a continent-traversing commemoration worthy of his transcendent talent in Journey Home, David Gulpilil. Narrated by Hugh Jackman and Yolngu hip-hop artist Baker Boy, co-directors Trisha Morton-Thomas (Audrey Napanangka, MIFF 2022) and Maggie Miles (Paper Planes, MIFF 2014) portray the man through the eyes of his community, intimately chronicling the epic trip through to its culmination in a Yolngu funeral ceremony and serving as a fitting tribute to a legend of Australian cinema.

The full MIFF 2025 program will launch on Thursday 10 July. Audiences are encouraged to plan ahead, with MIFF Multipasses and MIFF Memberships – which offer exclusive pre-sale access including allocated seating (in select venues) – available for purchase now via miff.com.au/tickets

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