Unveiled at tonight’s 2025 Program Launch, the 73rd Melbourne International Film Festival (MIFF) promises a cinematic feast this winter, with over 275 films screening from 7–24 August across Melbourne and regional Victoria — plus an extra week of streaming Australia-wide via MIFF Play.
Artistic Director Al Cossar described this year’s festival as “an invitation to discover a world of film, and the world on film,” calling it “a globe-trotting array of exceptional cinema, incredible experiences, and the biggest festival celebration of Australian filmmaking on the planet.”
Program highlights include the 10 films in the Bright Horizons competition, the world premiere of Jimmy Barnes: Working Class Man, and Ari Aster’s Eddington, fresh from Cannes. MIFF also presents Sirât, the Cannes Jury Prize winner and critics’ favourite — a thunderous, hallucinatory rave-at-the-end-of-the-world odyssey — and The Mastermind, Kelly Reichardt’s 1970s-set spin on the heist movie: a slow-burn portrait of delusion and decline, with Josh O’Connor compelling as a man out of his depth.
Mary Bronstein’s If I Had Legs I’d Kick You will make its Australian premiere as the Opening Night Gala film, kicking off the festival in style. Prime Minister by Michele Walshe and Lindsay features in MIFF’s Premiere With Purpose gala, presented by DECJUBA, and will be celebrated with a special black-carpet screening at ACMI.
Live score cinema returns in full force with The Passion of Joan of Arc featuring Julia Holter, and Parasite Live in Concert with composer Jung Jae-il and Orchestra Victoria.
Headliners
The Headliners strand at MIFF 2025 features a selection of acclaimed new films fresh from the global festival circuit. Highlights include Jafar Panahi’s Palme d’Or winner It Was Just an Accident, Richard Linklater’s Cannes-featured Blue Moon and Nouvelle Vague — a black-and-white homage to the French New Wave — and Kristen Stewart’s poetic directorial debut The Chronology of Water. Taiwanese director Shih-Ching Tsou’s Left-Handed Girl offers a quietly rebellious story of family and tradition in Taipei.
The program also includes Sergei Loznitsa’s Kafkaesque legal drama Two Prosecutors, Michael Angelo Covino’s screwball comedy Splitsville, and Robin Campillo’s queer coming-of-age drama Enzo. Hlynur Pálmason’s intimate Icelandic dramedy The Love That Remains explores co-parenting and personal ambition, while Gabriel Mascaro’s visually striking The Blue Trail takes viewers on a surreal, award-winning journey through futuristic Brazil, where control is repackaged as care.
Bright Horizons Competition
MIFF’s Bright Horizons competition celebrates rising filmmakers, showcasing first- and second-time directors from around the world. Competing for one of the richest film prizes globally, this year’s line-up includes April, First Light, If I Had Legs I’d Kick You, The Mysterious Gaze of the Flamingo, A Poet, Renoir — a delicate and deeply personal coming-of-age story set in 1980s Japan, exploring familial loss through the eyes of an imaginative 11-year-old girl — The Rivals of Amziah King, Sound of Falling, Urchin, and A Useful Ghost.
World Premieres at MIFF 2025
MIFF 2025 offers a rich slate of world premieres spanning music, sport, immersive storytelling, and genre-defying documentary.
Premiering in the documentary stream 1000 Women in Horror, a revealing new documentary from Donna Davies. Inspired by Alexandra Heller-Nicholas’ influential book, the film spotlights the vital — and too often overlooked — contributions of women in horror, both on screen and behind the camera, across more than a century of cinema.
Sport and storytelling collide at the Footy Shorts Gala on Tuesday 12 August. A joint initiative between MIFF, the AFL and VicScreen, this special event showcases five short documentaries offering fresh perspectives on Australian rules football. The films will debut at MIFF, with additional screenings across regional Victoria and online via MIFF Play.
In partnership with Now or Never, the festival presents The World Came Flooding In — a powerful new immersive installation by Van Sowerwine and Isobel Knowles. Combining virtual reality, projections, sound, and handcrafted miniatures, the work explores the impact of climate catastrophe through the personal stories of flood-affected individuals, transforming loss into shared understanding.
Screenings will take place across Melbourne, regional Victoria, and online via MIFF Play throughout August. For those interested, further details and the full program are available at miff.com.au.