Western Australian actor and director Frances O’Connor (Wednesday, Emily, Mansfield Park) will return home next month to head up the CinefestOZ Film Prize Jury, which will decide the winner of Australia’s richest $100,000 Film Prize at this year’s festival, running 30 August to 7 September, in the Margaret River wine region. Prolific actor and director…
Dean Francis’ provocative new film Body Blow will make its world premiere at Fantastic Fest in Austin, Texas (September 18–25), cementing its status as one of the most daring genre films of the year. Blending erotic tension, darkly comic twists, and a knowing nod to queer history, Body Blow reimagines the classic film noir as…
For more than 40 years, John Clarke made Australians and New Zealanders laugh with his sharp wit and brilliant satire. Whether on stage, screen, or in his long-running political sketches with Bryan Dawe, Clarke had a way of exposing hypocrisy while making it entertaining. When he died in 2017, he left behind not just a…
CinefestOZ Film Festival announced today that award winning producer, creator and founder of Kindling Productions, Imogen Banks (Offspring, Fake, Puberty Blues), and Fremantle Media’s Emmy and AACTA-nominated producer, Brett Popplewell (Bay of Fires, Heartbreak High, Wentworth), will headline the 2025 CinefestOZ Industry Program (4-5 September) in Busselton, Western Australia. Also joining the Industry Program is South African Film…
Film and cultural icons in this country don’t get any bigger than David Gulpilil – one of Australia’s most loved and respected actors. His career began with his debut in Walkabout (1971), and this seemingly unstoppable force went on to star in many classics, including Storm Boy (1976), Crocodile Dundee (1986), The Tracker (2002), Ten…
From the AACTA Award-Winning indie production company Breathless Films (Birdeater, Lonesome, The Longest Weekend) comes a new feature film written and directed by duo Josh Mullins and Ulysses Oliver (Love Road). With Kate Cornish (Heartbreak High, Optics) as DOP, and Flora Hadaway as Production Designer. It is currently being filmed in the luscious and ancient Colo Valley (Hawkesbury…
The Adelaide Film Festival (AFF) has announced that its Opening Night film will be the much-anticipated Australian premiere of Sophie Hyde’s Jimpa, starring Olivia Colman, John Lithgow and Aud Mason-Hyde. AFF kicks off with Jimpa on Wednesday October 15 with the Opening Night screening at Adelaide’s historic Capri theatre, to be followed by AFF’s famously fabulous…
South Australia’s flagship feature film development initiative, Film Lab: New Voices, has greenlit its third feature film for production – The Debt, an exciting new horror led by South Australian First Nations filmmakers. Co-written by Yankunytjatjara writer Pearl Berry and Piri Eddy, directed by Johanis Lyons-Reid and produced by Yankunytjatjara producer Lilla Berry, The Debt will premiere at Adelaide Film Festival in 2026. Here’s the…
Welcome to the latest episode of the Cinema Australia Podcast. In this episode, I’m joined by writer, director and producer Adrian Ortega to discuss the making of his new film, Westgate – a poetic exploration of family, culture, and the weight of past traumas. Set in 1999 in the shadows of the Westgate Bridge collapse,…
Filmmakers have been using the time-loop genre as a narrative device for decades, but none have come close to matching the nostalgic adoration of Harold Ramis’ Groundhog Day, starring Bill Murray as a depressed and cynical weatherman forced to relive a bad day. In Australia, we’ve had our own share of time-related films, from the…
Cinema Australia 