Come be a part of the Adelaide Film Festival 2026 opening night celebrations for a night out to remember. Against the backdrop of the 1970s Chilean military coup, two CIA operatives navigate loyalty, conspiracy and the consequences of foreign intervention.

Agata (Mia Wasikowska) a disillusioned writer, arrives in Sarajevo to write a novel set during the Bosnian war. As she speaks with survivors, her project begins to unravel. In the house where she’s staying, obscene art objects begin to vanish, and the line between lived experience and fiction starts to dissolve.

Inspired by his physicist father, Josef Gatti transforms scientific experiments into a sensory work of art. Captured entirely in camera without visual effects or digital manipulation, Phenomena reveals hidden worlds beyond ordinary perception. 

When 8-year-old Josephine (newcomer Mason Reeves) witnesses a shocking sexual assault, her childhood is shattered. Picking up the fragments will test her loving parents (Magic Mike star Channing Tatum and Crazy Rich Asians’ Gemma Chan) to their limits in Beth de Araújo’s Sundance winner.

Winner of the Un Certain Regard Prize at Cannes, Sandra Wollner's Everytime follows a family as they finally take the holiday tragedy once denied them. Beneath Tenerife's subtropical sun, past and present begin to overlap in a surprising exploration of grief, memory and forgiveness.

Against the backdrop of the AIDS crisis, a theatre artist refuses to surrender to fear, finding solace in art, intimacy and community. Ira Sachs’ deeply felt drama is a moving ode to those who kept loving, creating and dreaming in the face of unimaginable loss.

Anna and Yo are unlikely friends with an unbreakable bond. When the pair first met, Yo was 73 and Anna 24. Through archival footage, interviews, puppets and insects, filmmaker and entomologist Anna Fitch with husband Banker White, create a joyous and artful celebration of friendship.

Legendary jazz pianist Bill Evans is unmoored by loss in this hauntingly beautiful black and white portrait. Rejecting the conventions of the biopic, it drifts through grief, memory and withdrawal, tracing a private world shaped as much by absence as by the music itself.

It’s time to party with Jim Queen, the riotous French animation from the pulsing heart of Paris. What happens when roided-up social media influencer, Jim Parfait, who rules Paris’s queer clubs with his bulging pecs, is struck down by the heinously beige plague heterosis? It’s left to nerdy twink Lucien to save the day, if only he can keep his right-wing mum at bay.

A luminous exploration of one of Germany’s greatest authors captured in a brief vignette - Thomas Mann’s 1948 return to Germany from exile in America. His much-anticipated pronouncement on what should be the prevailing principles for the now divided Germany is contrasted to the relationship with his despairing son, Karl. As the daughter of Mann and sister of Karl, Sandra Hüller is magnificent - as is all the cast.

Who takes care of the emotionally scarred survivors of an atrocity after everyone else moves on? This sobering and insightful documentary bears witness to trauma's harrowing effects and the seductive pull of alternative facts — where even the unlikeliest of people can be ensnared.

This year's Don Dunstan Award recipient is internationally acclaimed actor, writer and director Leah Purcell AM. Join Leah Purcell AM in conversation with Wesley Enoch AM, a proud Quandamooka man, celebrated playwright and artistic director.

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.

When Love Me star, Bojana Novakovic travels from Hollywood to rural Serbia to explore the life of the eccentric, tormented aunt she was never allowed to know, she is forced to face secrets about the women in her family and about herself as well. The result is a rousing documentary about the survival of four generations of women in the face of patriarchal violence.

Oscar-winning director Ryūsuke Hamaguchi returns with a luminous drama set in France, where Marie-Lou (Virginie Efira), the director of a care home, forms an unexpected friendship with Mari (Tao Okamoto), a terminally ill Japanese theatre director far from home. Together, they discover new ways of caring, connecting and living.

Sixteen-year-old swimmer Paula crushes on Daniel, hoping to kiss him at a party she attends with her best friend, La Maestra. But excitement turns to dread in the days that follow, during a sweltering summer in Mexico City. A deft exploration of consent that every teenager should see.

The AFF Youth Filmmaking Competition is an opportunity for South Australian students and young people to experience the power of film, make industry connections, and share their own stories on the big screen.

The AFF Youth Filmmaking Competition is an opportunity for South Australian students and young people to experience the power of film, make industry connections, and share their own stories on the big screen.

Almost gobbled up by a large bird, a tiny papaya seed is swept away from her loving mother tree. A grand odyssey awaits, as she sprouts legs and explores the jungle and the factories that lie beyond in this wonderfully inventive escapade that will speak to the whole family despite being dialogue-free.

Hear from young filmmakers on how they established their filmmaking careers during the 2026 AFF Youth Schools Screening Day.

The compelling and poignant story of a young man who defies his father’s wishes to pursue his dreams. Shine is a story of rebellion and individuality through the eyes of a pianist whose only form of self-expression is found in the keys of his instrument. The Adelaide Film Festival (AFF) celebrates the 30th anniversary of Shine and the new 4K digital remastered release.