Princess Diana inhabits a Technicolor storybook world of gauchos, puppets and painted sets, until a magical bracelet offers escape. As fantasy fractures and new realities emerge, this shape-shifting Chilean tale asks whether freedom can ever release us from the bonds of love and obligation.

Awards & Voting
Awards & Voting
Feature Fiction Films in Competition
Donkey Princess
Princess Diana inhabits a Technicolor storybook world of gauchos, puppets and painted sets, until a magical bracelet offers escape. As fantasy fractures and new realities emerge, this shape-shifting Chilean tale asks whether freedom can ever release us from the bonds of love and obligation.
Fruit Gathering
A deep bond with unpredictable undercurrents forms between textile workers San Kyi and Theint Theint Oo. Is there a chance for something deeper between them or is the inexorable pull downwards inescapable in a Myanmar torn apart by brutal violence? Aung Phyoe’s heady drama dances between doom and desire.
Lovers in the Blue Night
Married through pity, Karim and Ameena eke out a passionless life in Mumbai. She clings to anonymous letters, while he’s quietly gay. When Karim finds desire in a thief named Sukka, and Ameena mistakes a pimp for her letter-writer, four lonely lives collide in longing, illusion and survival.
The Smell of Apples
In 1974 South Africa, 11-year-old Marnus (Dawian van der Westhuizen) has known an idyllic childhood of family, friendship and summer holidays. When a missing fishing rod sets off a disturbing chain of events, he begins to recognise the violence and inequality his privileged world has allowed him not to see.
Tiber
Thoughtful Marco feels the history of art deep in his soul. But when awful news sees him placed on leave from his lecturing gig in Rome, he jumps in a beat-up Fiat and heads to Tuscany to take his young daughter on an emotional journey along the Tiber River.
Feature Documentary Films in Competition
The Balkan Cowboy
As a child, visual artist, academic and filmmaker Dragana Jurišić adored Westerns, both American and from the mysterious former-Yugoslavian have-a-go hero, Hari Džekson. But who was Hari really? Jurišić’s kookily charming, if occasionally chilling, Sarajevo Film Festival competition documentary attempts to fill in the blanks blurred by war crimes.
Jean-Michel Basquiat
Burn bright enough and you’ll be remembered forever, no matter how tragically short your life is cut. Such was the fate of game-changing artist Jean-Michel Basquiat – friend of Madonna, Grace Jones, Debbie Harry, Keith Haring and Andy Warhol – who blazed an indelible trail before joining the infamous 27 Club. But when legend envelops your legacy, with Basquiat’s brilliantly bold works going for as much as US$110 million, the truth can get lost. Viridiana Lieberman and Quinn Whitney Wilson’s iridescent documentary sets the record straight.
The Way You See Me
Filmed across a decade, this evolving self-portrait captures gender transition from the inside out, tracing a radical transformation from hyperfemininity towards defiant masculinity while confronting the forces of class, privilege and patriarchy within Mexico’s conservative upper-middle-class society.
Wolf
British avant-pop musician Patrick Wolf revisits the triumphs and traumas that shaped his life and music through a lifetime of archival material and a searching conversation with longtime friend Tilda Swinton. Delicate yet emotionally raw, Wolf exchanges mythmaking for vulnerability.
Change Award Films in Competition
All Rivers Spill Their Stories To The Sea
When thousands of poisoned crabs wash ashore on England's north-east coast, veteran fisherman Stan Rennie begins a search for answers. Jeanie Finlay's stirring documentary uncovers an environmental mystery intertwined with political change, economic hardship and the quiet dignity of a resilient community.
Humboldt USA
German polymath Alexander von Humboldt was welcomed by President Thomas Jefferson and his name is lent to places across the United States. So why does nobody know Humboldt or his radical musings on our interconnected world? G. Anthony Svatek’s astonishingly beautiful essay film will get you up to speed.
Time and Water
You’ll come to mourn the loss of a glacier every bit as much as a family member when you melt into Sara Dosa’s astonishing new film. As narrated by the Icelandic poet Andri Snær Magnason, who pours his family’s soul into it, it’s a spellbinding elegy for a fast-vanishing majesty.
Steal This Story, Please!
Marvel as Democracy Now! anchor Amy Goodman reveals how she built the fiercely independent news program from a community radio-syndicated show run out of a broom closet into a globally watched TV broadcast without sacrificing her values and firm belief that the fourth estate should be a force for good.
The Way We Move
A deaf person can feel music’s beat through their feet. Powerhouse Amber Galloway reckons the community deserves more. Join her bootcamp for ASL translators, teaching them to reveal the heart of a song beating between the lyrics, and the wordless highs and lows from classical music to EDM in this SXSW highlight.
Short Films in Competition
Baby Talk
As her wedding to the father of her unborn child looms, Leo steals a precious day with best friend Amy to find a wedding dress on the final leg of a road trip home.
Hugs
A cyclist witnesses two people in a tender embrace, and begins to view the world through a new lens.
Maŋutji
Two young teens navigate their ever-growing draw toward one other, while maintaining cultural boundaries and kinship.
Morana
In a traditional Czech village, a nihilistic teenager is cursed to be delivered into the hands of Morana, the Pagan goddess of death.
Third Space
A charming record of the end of summer and start of winter inside a North Perth Town Hall.
Wet Feathers
After developing a phobia of pigeons, the eccentric Brett Trueman escapes to the underground town of Coober Pedy where he recounts experiences from his life.


























