AFF 2025

Adelaide Film Festival 15 – 26 Oct 2025

Cinema lovers once again flocked to Adelaide screens in October for Adelaide Film Festival 2025. In its 22nd edition, the festival featured over 120 films, with 23 World Premieres and 38 Australian Premieres.

AFF 2025 kicked off with the Australian premiere of Jimpa, from acclaimed local director Sophie Hyde, with cast and crew in attendance at our Opening Night Gala. Over 12 days, AFF also saw a thumping, rave themed Friday Night Party following the South Australian premiere of Sirāt, and pink carpet premieres of AFFIF titles including Lynette Wallworth’s Edge of Life, Anthony Frith’s Mockbuster, Mia’Kate Russell’s first feature Penny Lane is Dead, We Are Not Powerless directed by Jolyon Hoff and Pauline Clague’s The Colleano Heart. Audiences were also treated to two AFFIF exclusive preview titles: Wolfram, Warwick Thornton’s sequel to Sweet Country (AFFIF 2017), and Dario Russo’s debut feature, The Fox.

Our Official Competitions presented a varied snapshot of the most distinctive features of 2025. The jury (Jub Clerc, John Sheedy, Pavel Cortés, Marion Pilowsky and Murray Bartlett) awarded the Feature Fiction prize to Vanilla, directed by Mayra Hermosillo. Other films in competition were A Useful Ghost (Ratchapoom Boonbunchachoke), Perla (Alexandra Makarová), Phantoms of July (Julian Radlmaier) and Reedland (Sven Bresser). The Documentary Feature Competition was won by She, directed by Parsifal Reparato. Other films in competition were: Cast Off (Julian Wittman), North South Man Woman (Christina Sun Kim, Morten Traavik), Sanatorium (Gar O’Rourke) and The Tale of Silyan (Tamara Kotevska).

For the second year in a row, the Change Award and Shorts Award were presided over by juries. The Change Award jury, comprising three leaders in factual filmmaking and activism, Natasha Gadd, Katrina Lucas and Adelaide Xerri, awarded the prize to Trade Secret, directed by Abraham Joffe. Other films in competition were: Black Water (Natxo Leuza), Only on Earth (Robin Petré), Power Station (Dan Edelstyn, Hilary Powell) and Until the Sky Falls Quiet (Erica Yen-Chin Long, Jason Korr). Leading members of the local screen industry, Manda Flett, Isaac Coen Lindsay and Matt Vesely made up the Shorts Jury. They awarded the top prize to The Eating of an Orange, directed by May Kindred-Boothby, with a special mention to God Is Shy directed by Jocelyn Charles. Other shorts in competition were: Automagic (Ashok Vish), My Wonderful Life, (Calleen Koh), Guttercat (Aubrey Winslow) and Norheimsund (Ana A. Alpizar).

Our Special Presentations section once again showcased some of the biggest titles of the year. In 2025, these were Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein, Rental Family, starring Brendan Fraser, and Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere, the highly anticipated Bruce Springsteen biopic starring Jeremy Allen White. A selection of late announcements also brough Adelaide audiences some of the buzziest titles from TIFF and Venice: Park Chan-Wook’s No Other Choice, Yorgos Lanthimos’ Bugonia and Mike Figgis’ Megadoc.

Our Country Spotlight took us to Mexico, showcasing the nation’s varied filmmaking talent, including Feature Fiction Competition winner, Vanilla, Victoria Franco’s debut film, Twelve Moons, journalism thriller Crocodiles and Aria Covamonas’ The Great History of Western Philosophy.

AFF is proud to champion first time directors, and the 2025 festival was no different. Debut features in the program included (but were not limited to) Zoe Pepper’s Birthright, Sivaranjini J.’s Victoria, Christian Byers’ Death of an Undertaker and Camera d’Or winner The President’s Cake, directed by Hasan Hadi.

The ever-popular Screen Conversations program saw invigorating discussions on film financing, distribution, bold first features, horror filmmaking, acting, and more. We were proud to showcase two special in-conversation sessions with Don Dunstan Award winner Robert Connolly and Bettison & James Award winner Richard Leplastier.

Find all the 2025 event photos here.