Tonight, the 73rd Melbourne International Film Festival (MIFF) unveiled an outstanding program of over 275 screen works and announced the 10 Bright Horizons films screening in competition and vying for MIFF’s flagship prize. From the 7th to the 24th of August, cinephiles across Melbourne, regional Victoria, and throughout the country online can explore a diverse program overflowing with features, shorts and XR experiences.
On and off the screen, MIFF 2025 connects deeper with festival-goers from showcasing the best new Australian filmmaking, beloved auteurs, alongside live-score cinema events in Julia Holter: The Passion of Joan of Arc and Parasite Live in Concert with composer Jung Jae il, presented by Orchestra Victoria. This year’s program boasts a curated schedule of talks, panels, special events and no shortage of blockbusters – including the World Premiere of Jimmy Barnes: Working Class Man and Ari Aster’s buzzy Eddington arriving hot from Cannes.
Alongside many of the Bright Horizons directors and MIFF Jury attending this year’s event, festival-goers can expect a bevy of visiting creatives and stars in town as MIFF rolls out the red carpet for 18 days of world-class cinema events. Guests set to attend this year’s festival include Dacre Montgomery, Emily Browning, Sean Keenan, Mary Bronstein and Marlon Williams – with more names to be shared closer to opening.
Arriving as one of the most anticipated films of the festival calendar, If I Had Legs I’d Kick You by writer-director Mary Bronstein not only makes its Australian debut as MIFF’s Opening Night Gala feature film on Thursday 7th August, but also screens as a Bright Horizons Competition film. Devastatingly honest and a darkly comic vision of motherhood, Australia’s own Rose Byrne, who leads a star cast, was judged the best performance at this year’s Berlinale. The film also includes fearless appearances by Conan O’Brien, fellow Aussie Danielle Macdonald, Christian Slater and A$AP Rocky.
Returning for its second consecutive year, MIFF’s Premiere With Purpose gala, presented by DECJUBA, will screen Prime Minister by Michelle Walshe and Lindsay Utz. The documentary chronicles Jacinda Ardern‘s tenure as New Zealand PM, from navigating crises to redefining global leadership through her empathetic yet resolute approach. The Victorian Premiere will be celebrated with a special black-carpet event hosted at ACMI on Thursday 14th August.
The festival’s beloved Family Gala is back on Sunday 17th August presenting The Bad Guys 2 by Pierre Perifel and JP Sans, based on the list-topping children’s book series by Aussie actor-turned-author, Aaron Blabey. The kid-friendly Ocean’s Eleven meets Baby Driver takes its explosive action cues from Fast & Furious and Mission: Impossible. This bigger, badder sequel features an all-star cast including getaway driver Mr. Wolf (Sam Rockwell), grumpy safecracker Mr. Snake (Marc Maron), sensitive master of disguise Mr. Shark (Craig Robinson), hacker Ms. ‘Webs’ Tarantula (Awkwafina), hot-tempered Mr. Piranha (Anthony Ramos), the return of Professor Marmalade (Richard Ayaode), and new character, Doom (Natasha Lyonne).
Previously announced, this year’s MIFF Premiere Fund presents seven new Australian features, including Kasimir Burgess‘ Iron Winter, which follows two young horse herders through the backdrop of East Asia’s breathtaking and forbidding Mongolian steppes; Lorin Clarke‘s intimate portrait of her father, the late-great funny man John Clarke, in But Also John Clarke; Kalu Oji‘s quintessential suburban Melbourne tale of life in a migrant community, Pasa Faho, starring Tyson Palmer and Okey Bakassi; Nicholas Clifford‘s Y2K tequila-fueled comedy One More Shot, with Emily Browning, Sean Keenan, Ashley Zukerman, and Aisha Dee; Kristina Kraskov‘s observational documentary Spreadsheet Champions, which charts six young people in the world of competitive Excel; Sue Thomson‘s humorous and playful Careless, exploring Australia’s aged care crisis; and James J. Robinson‘s feature debut, First Light, a slow-burn crime drama exploring faith and corruption – which also screens as part of this year’s Bright Horizons Competition.
Also featuring across the Bright Horizons Competition alongside If I Had Legs I’d Kick You and First Light will be such titles as The Mysterious Gaze of the Flamingo by director Diego Céspedes; Urchin, an astonishing directorial debut from Babygirl star Harris Dickinson, marks a jaggedly heartbreaking portrait of addiction and survival on London’s streets; Thai auteur Ratchapoom Boonbunchachoke‘s enigmatic debut feature, A Useful Ghost, arrives in Australia blurring the boundaries between the living
and the spectral in contemporary Bangkok; the highly anticipated crime thriller The Rivals of Amziah King, starring Matthew McConaughey and Kurt Russell, which marks the return of director Andrew Patterson (The Vast of Night); and the uncompromising and unforgettable April sees Georgian powerhouse Dea Kulumbegashvili return with a searing exploration of reproductive rights and bodily autonomy.
This year’s Headliners strand, presented by MINI, is where audiences will find an unmissable lineup of buzzy new films hot off the festival circuit and early access to compelling new works from some of the world’s most revered and buzzworthy international directors. Some of the highlighted titles this year include the Palme d’Or winning It Was Just an Accident by Iranian master director Jafar Panahi; A24-backed dramedy Sorry, Baby by creative multihyphenate Eva Victor; and Richard Linklater’s A-list powered Blue Moon, a portrait of fallen stardom centred around Broadway lyricist Lorenz Hart.
Linklater will have another of his features on deck, with his fresh from Cannes Nouvelle Vague – an affectionate recreation of the moment Jean-Luc Godard and the French New Wave changed forever – starring Guillaume Marbeck and Zoey Deutch; Kristen Stewart’s splashy Cannes-premiering directorial debut in The Chronology of Water poetically adapts writer Lidia Yuknavitch’s visceral 2011 memoir; divorce gets the screwball treatment in Splitsville, Michael Angelo Covino‘s raucous comedy starring Dakota Johnson and Adria Arjona; and the quietly surreal The Love That Remains proves an intimate dramedy about a separated Icelandic couple learning to co-parent while navigating lingering attachments and personal ambitions.
In the International Highlights program, the powerful debut from Iraqi filmmaker Hasan Hadi, The President’s Cake, is a stirring tale of resilience under authoritarian rule; in Cactus Pears, rural India’s caste divisions erupt into violence in Rohan Parashuram Kanawade‘s searing exploration of forbidden desire; and in The Legend of Ochi, fantasy and coming-of-age come together in Isaiah
Saxon‘s visually stunning debut featuring Helena Zengel, Willem Dafoe, Emily Watson and Finn Wolfhard.
Some of this year’s Documentary Highlights include Mistress Dispeller, Elizabeth Lo‘s extraordinary peek behind the curtain of China’s booming “love industry”. With unprecedented access to all parties involved, this intimate portrait of modern love reveals the surprising profession of “mistress dispellers”, the professionals hired by the faithful party to go undercover and infiltrate and break-up their cheating partner’s affair; and Igor Bezinović’s explosive chronicle of a forgotten revolution, Fiume o morte!, sees Croatian punk spirit meet political fury. This archival treasure trove of rebellion shows how, when Italian fascists seized the city of Fiume in 1919, they inadvertently sparked an anarchist uprising that prefigured punk by half a century.
In the Australian Highlights, queer comedy reaches cosmic heights, generational wealth and millennial desperation are pulled apart, and found footage is localised in such titles as, respectively, Lesbian Space Princess, Birthright, and We Bury the Dead. Grief takes otherworldly forms in Went Up The Hill, Samuel Van Grinsven‘s haunting sophomore feature starring Dacre Montgomery (Stranger Things) and Vicky Krieps (Phantom Thread) as strangers drawn together by loss in the Aotearoa wilderness, where the line between healing and haunting blurs with each passing night. Beast of War, directed by Kiah Roache-Turner, is a World-Premiering gripping blend of wartime drama and monster horror. After their ship is sunk during WWII, a group of young Australian soldiers — including Indigenous soldier Leo (Mark Coles Smith) and 17-year-old Will (Joel Nankervis) — must survive adrift at sea while being hunted by a monstrous great white shark. And fermentation meets the undead in Zombucha!, the hilarious and big-hearted horror-comedy starring Jackie Van Beek and directed by Claudia Dzienny. The zom-com putting the culture in kombucha culture begins at a trendy café where the signature brew turns customers into the walking dead. Minimum-wage baristas become humanity’s last hope in this caffeinated tale of survival that’s part Shaun of the Dead, part Sorry to Bother You.
Alongside the MIFF Shorts Program, immersive installations, 4K restoration prints of such classics as Looking For Alibrandi and Jane Campion‘s Sweetie, the MIFF Talks program, which expands with a dynamic lineup of events designed to spark dialogue and deepen engagement with screen culture, and the Festival Hub and Bar, where MIFF-revellers can iscover some of this year’s lively festival
hotspots and post-screening hidden gems, the 2025 MIFF stands as an invitation to discover a world of film, and the world on film; to up-res your cinephile credentials, and to binge your way through an epic program brimming with imagination and ideas.
For more information on ticket availability and a full 2025 program breakdown, visit the official MIFF site here.
*Images courtesy Common State