Tonight, the 74th Melbourne International Film Festival (MIFF) unveiled its full 2026 program including more than 300 screen works spanning features, shorts and XR experiences, and special events.
On screen and beyond, MIFF 2026 bursts to life with an unmissable slate of special events – including the World Premiere of Tina Arena: Unravel Me, the return of Footy Shorts alongside the AFL and VicScreen, and the inaugural Sovereign Shorts Gala, in partnership with NITV and VicScreen.
“We’re again thrilled to reveal the full film overload of MIFF’s epic 2026 program! From highly anticipated festival blockbusters to bold new voices, experimentations to a family day at the flicks, MIFF is the maximalist way to enjoy all of what cinema can offer in the midst of a Melbourne Winter. We look forward to welcoming audiences back to the big screen this August,” said Artistic Director Al Cossar, of tonight’s Program Launch, presented by Mac Forbes.
Across the MIFF Shorts Awards, presented by Armani Beauty and the MIFF Awards the festival celebrates cinematic excellence with a prize pool of over $300,000 – one of the world’s most significant prize pools.
The flagship Bright Horizons Award, supported by the Victorian Government through VicScreen, recognises first and second-time filmmakers with $140,000, making it one of the richest feature film prizes in the world. Award nominees will be announced later this month.
The Premiere With Purpose Gala returns on Tuesday 11 August with a special screening of Silenced, Selina Miles’ (Martha: A Picture Story, MIFF 2019) incendiary documentary in which lawyers, activists and survivors – including Jennifer Robinson, Amber Heard, Brittany Higgins and Colombian journalist Catalina Ruiz-Navarro – reckon with the weaponisation of defamation law to silence women who speak out. Furious, urgent and impossible to look away from, Silenced indicts a misogynist status quo with forensic precision. The Victorian premiere will be celebrated with a special gala event at The Capitol.
This year’s MIFF Premiere Fund presents six new Australian features, beginning with three intimate portraits of people finding their place: award-winning filmmaker Trevor Graham’s (Make Hummus Not War, MIFF 2012) Digby & Camille, co-directed by its subject Archibald Prize-selected painter Digby Webster, weaving fly-on-the-wall footage with animated sequences from his own art into a tender, quietly humorous portrait of a couple living with Down syndrome; Maddelin McKenna’s (Patterns of the Afternoon, MIFF 2022) debut Mad Rush, presented by Rydges Melbourne, in which a phone call about fraudulent bank activity sends a rootless Gen Z spiralling through Melbourne’s CBD; and Harvey Zielinski’s Sweet Milk Lake, a fish-out-of-water dramedy in which a young trans man discovers the easiest place to finally belong is built on a lie, selected for this year’s Bright Horizons Competition.
The remaining three venture further afield: Arlo Dean Cook’s Jebediah: Are We Ok? draws on three decades of archival footage to trace the Perth alt-rock quartet’s arc from Triple J darlings to a candid reckoning with what sustained success actually costs; Dan Jackson’s decade-in-the-making Death of a Shaman plunges into the Ecuadorian Amazon, where Indigenous shaman Rafael Santi races to pass sacred knowledge to his grandson while mining and oil corporations close in; and Isaac Elliott’s debut Hard as Puck follows Western Australia’s only para ice hockey team as they wrangle sponsorships, navigate bureaucratic politics and show up anyway – against Norway, against the United States, and against a booking system that won’t give them the rink.
The world’s largest showcase of local filmmaking returns with an exciting line-up of stories from across the nation, highlighting the voices shaping contemporary Australian cinema. The statistics on First Nations disadvantage in Australia’s legal system are as familiar as they are damning – which is exactly why Kieran Satour (Gurindji, Pertame and Worimi) and Tyson Perkins (Arrernte and Kalkadoon) set out to tell a different story. Weaving memoir, poetry, dance and activism into a hybrid anthology built entirely from Indigenous perspectives, Facing the Numbers connects to ancient traditions of oral storytelling and songlines to find the human lives behind the statistics.
Set to have its World Premiere this August, Wilderness opens on a Melbourne doctor whose carefully constructed life is quietly unravelling. In the wake of a serious car accident, Allie hits the road into Victoria’s High Country, dog in tow, on a journey that grows increasingly primal. MIFF Accelerator alum Mirrah Foulkes (Animal Kingdom) delivers a bold central performance alongside Yael Stone (Blaze, MIFF 2022) in Martin McKenna’s latest work – a midlife crisis movie about women behaving badly that doubles as a paean to the environments we stop listening to.
In Phillip Philadelphia, prolific filmmaker Adam C.Briggs – whose A Grand Mockery took top honours at SXSW Sydney and Best Director at Sitges – turns his lens on the garish, grubby beauty of the Gold Coast, capturing it in 16mm for his latest twisted caper. The eponymous Phillip fritters his days away in a faded motel pursuing flights of fantasy with an aspiring actor and the drug dealer next door, evoking Florida as seen through the lenses of Harmony Korine and Sean Baker. It’s Briggs’s most eloquently vulgar work yet.
When a glowing green meteorite crash-lands near her small town, slacker Sheri (Sara Thompson, One of Us Is Lying) finds herself humanity’s last hope alongside her estranged astronomer dad Hank (Scott Major, Neighbours) and her Scooby Gang of mates – Poppy (Annapurna Sriram, Fucktoys), Ash (Karis Oka, The Deb) and Finn (Jess McLeod, One of Us Is Lying). Directing her seventh feature at just 21, prolific Aussie queer-horror talent AliceMaioMackay (T Blockers) blends retro schlock with warmth for chosen family. Produced by Jane Schoenbrun (I Saw the TV Glow, MIFF 2024), Our Effed Up World features cameos from TV Glow star Jack Haven and MIFF Accelerator alum, co-writer/director Leela Varghese (Lesbian Space Princess, MIFF 2025).
Made for just $28,000 and drawn from her own experiences as a fashion photographer, Hyun Lee’s (Asian Girls, MIFF 2018) debut feature French Girls, presented by Time Out, is a DIY portrait of the drudgery of labour that punches well above its weight. Shot in Sydney by cinematographer Dimitri Zaunders (The Golden Spurtle, MIFF 2025) with non-professional actors, including impressive newcomer Mia Kidis, it’s at once a comedy about fashion’s absurdities, a commentary on the construction of imagery and a work in open dialogue with the Nouvelle Vague.
The Fox marks the feature debut of Danger 5 co-showrunner Dario Russo, who writes, directs, edits and composes a wickedly dark Australian folktale about small-town duplicity built around remarkable animatronic puppetry and a cast that goes fully, gloriously ham. Jai Courtney (Felony, MIFF Closing Night 2014) and Emily Browning (One More Shot, MIFF 2025) star alongside Olivia Colman as a trickster fox and Sam Neill as a gossiping magpie, with Damon Herriman (Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, MIFF 2019) and Miranda Otto (Love Serenade, MIFF 1996) rounding out the ensemble.
Spurred by a conversation with ethicist Peter Singer to investigate the secretive world of animal testing, veteran ABC journalist and former Q&A host Tony Jones makes his directorial debut with Sentient. Drawing on contemporary and archival footage alongside expert commentary from frontline scientists, the film surfaces a sobering truth: animal testing harms not only its physical victims, but the humans who carry it out.
When Melbourne filmmaker Vee Shi returns to the rural Chinese town he left at thirteen, he finds his father recovering from a stroke and a fractured family forced to navigate the complicated weight of duty and care. Fresh from its Documentary Australia Award at this year’s Sydney Film Festival, Time and Tide was initially conceived as a scripted film in which Shi’s family would play themselves; what emerged is an at times shockingly intimate portrait of love, duty and inherited trauma. A MIFF Accelerator alum whose short Jia (MIFF 2023) first explored familial estrangement, Shi extends that inquiry into the most contested space of all: home.
Three Chinese women seek intimacy on their own terms in Replica, VCA grad Chouwa Liang’s debut feature expanding her short My AI Lover into a timely portrait of technology, fantasy and connection. Informed by her own experience of developing feelings for a chatbot, Liang uses the backdrop of modern China gender inequality, high-pressure work environments and a burgeoning love economy – to sensitively contextualise her subjects’ unorthodox approaches to romance.
Behind Tina Arena the power balladeer and pop icon is the woman her family still calls Pina, and Tina Arena: Unravel Me, a World Premiere from Adrian Russell Wills (Kindred, MIFF 2023), follows the threads of her story in candid, dryly funny conversation. Across 50 years in music, her arc takes in suburban Melbourne, Young Talent Time, a soaring run of 90s hits and repeated reinventions in the UK and France, with new and archival interviews from Céline Dion, Lionel Richie, Katy Perry, Marc Anthony, JessicaMauboy and The Veronicas, among others.
Special Focus: Sarah Watt honours the late, great Australian writer/director and animator, whose distinctive films explored grief, love and everyday resilience with emotional honesty and a quietly dark humour. The program features Look Both Ways, My Year Without Sex, alongside a Sarah Watt shorts retrospective, followed by a panel with her collaborators. The season runs in parallel to a new ACMI display exploring Watt’s creative process, drawn from her personal archive and presented at ACMI’s free centrepiece exhibition The Story of the Moving Image.
MIFF and NITV are proud to present the inaugural Sovereign Shorts, supported by VicScreen. The new initiative invites Victorian-based First Peoples writers and directors to create original short documentaries exploring Treaty as lived experience. Four outstanding teams were selected from across Victoria, each supported with mentorship, resources and a $40,000 production budget, with the resulting films receiving their Gala World premiere at MIFF on Wednesday 19 August.
The four films include Dya (Country), in which writer/director/producer Tracey Rigney (Wotjobaluk, Ngarrindjeri) delves into the Wotjobaluk Nations’ underdog fight for recognition, revealing Treaty as a deeply local reality unfolding far from Melbourne; Protest on the Dancefloor, directed by Talia Liddle (Arrernte and Luritja) and produced by Travis Cloudy-Hengsen (Torres Strait – Ugar, Iama, Erub), exploring how Blackfellas in Melbourne use music and dancefloors to create spaces of sovereignty and liberation; Queens to the Front, a dialogue between writer/director/producer Tammy Lee Rock (Pakana) and Senator Lidia Thorpe on the personal impact of Treaty and sovereignty; and Slow Hours, in which writer/director/producer Theo McMahon (Bundjalung) weaves together the lives of three women through the poetic, hopeful lens of a young Indigenous teenager navigating Victoria’s fight for sovereignty.
Returning for its second season, MIFF and AFL Presents: Footy Shorts, again supported by VicScreen, offering emerging Victorian filmmakers mentorship and a $25,000 production budget – plus access to the AFL archive – to create short-form documentaries exploring people’s love for and connection to Australia’s game. Five films were selected for production, with their World Premiere Gala screening at MIFF on Wednesday 12 August before streaming Australia-wide via MIFF Online on ACMI Cinema 3 from 14–31 August.
The five films include Carn the Chinese!, directed and produced by Angela How, following a group of young Chinese Australian men who come together to play Aussie Rules with true-blue passion; For the Boys, written, directed and produced by Mitchell Withers (produced by Sofia Viegas), in which Australia’s first openly queer ex-AFL player steps back onto the field, bringing his whole self for the first time; Invincible Spirit, directed and produced by Mark Thomson and David Callow, a portrait of the Rumbalara Football and Netball Club as a fortress of Yorta Yorta pride and cultural healing in the heart of the Goulburn Murray; Kura: An African AFL Story, written, directed and produced by former AFLW player Akec Makur Chuot and directed and produced by Meg Duncan, tracing a path from her heroes to the new generation of African Australian stars navigating two worlds to find belonging; and North Melbourne Cheersquad, directed by Jasper Caverly and Andrew Goode (produced by Sophie Booth), following members of the North Melbourne Cheer Squad as they prepare to face Essendon – a club they haven’t beaten in a decade.
Other Australian films that will screen at MIFF include Genevieve Clay-Smith’s Boss Cat which follows Twenty-three-year-old Sonja (Olivia Hargroder) who lives with Trisomy 21 (Down syndrome) and must fight for her independence following the tragic loss of her mother; Guided by Horses, filmmaker Sean O’Reilly’s documentary on the work of pioneering Aboriginal researcher Professor Juli Coffin who runs a groundbreaking program pairing First Nations teenagers with horses as a culturally safe path to healing, reconnection and adulthood; Rhian Skirving and W.A.M. Bleakley’s Rodeo Dreams which was filmed over three years and documents the grit and determination of the four Queenslanders bull riders; James Hunter’s The Latcher which follows an overworked midwife haunted by waking nightmares of an eerie presence that creeps from the shadowy bushland into the home where she lost everything; Whistle, Christopher Nelius’ (Girls Can’t Surf) offbeat crowd-pleaser following the world’s greatest whistling competition; Yesterday Island, Sam Voutas’ dark indie comedy about a man trapped on an island in a time loop; and Yumburra, Grace McKenzie’s portrait of Bruce Pascoe in the aftermath of Dark Emu, living on his riverside farm and testing the theories of his landmark book.
MIFF 2026 runs 6–23 August, with MIFF Online running nationally 14–30 August. Visit miff.com.au to explore the full program.
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