The Adelaide Film Festival (AFF) has announced a 30th anniversary celebration screening of Scott Hick’s Oscar®-winning Shine as part of an early look at this year’s program.
Premiering a brand new 4K digital restoration of the acclaimed film, the story stands the test of time, featuring the stand-out performance from Geoffrey Rush that catapulted him to international stardom, alongside the equally impressive Noah Taylor, with Sir John Gielgud, Lynn Redgrave and Armin Mueller-Stahl.
A proud South Australian, Scott Hicks will present the film and reflect on his own stellar international career.
Released in 1996, Shine is a biographical drama directed by Hicks from a screenplay by Jan Sardi, based on the life of David Helfgott, a pianist who suffered a mental breakdown and spent years in institutions.
Shine had its world premiere at the Sundance Film Festival on January 21, 1996, followed by a theatrical release in Australia on August 15. At the 69th Academy Awards, the film was nominated for seven awards including Best Picture, with Rush winning Best Actor.
Another Australian film, Phenomena has also been announced as part of the early look at the festival’s 2026 lineup.
Phenomena is experimental cinema at its most wondrous – a psychedelic odyssey into the fabric of the universe, guided by Australian filmmaker Josef Gatti and his immersive practical experiments that blur the lines between art and science to reveal nature’s inner workings.
Captured entirely by camera with no visual effects or artifice, the unfolding awe-inspiring hyper-real imagery is elevated by music from legendary Nils Frahm and an ethereal electronic original score by Rival Consoles, transforming curious observation into a hypnotic audio-visual adventure spanning from the subatomic to cosmological scales.
Tracing the forces and elements shaping the natural world, Phenomena is both a kinetic sensory experience and science lesson, exploring the wonders of the universe and our connection to it.
The Adelaide Film Festival will run October 14 – 25, 2026. Details here.
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