The Sydney Film Festival 2025 has over 201 films from 70 countries on offer. To help you decide what to watch, here’s 10 picks of the best movies to see at the 2025 Sydney Film Festival.
Harvest
A superbly feral Caleb Landry Jones (Nitram) leads this immersive tale from Athina Rachel Tsangari (Attenberg, SFF 2011) of a Middle Ages farming community torn by tribalism.
A Venice 2024 competition title, Harvest is a welcome return for director Tsangari, a core member of the ‘Greek Weird Wave’ (along with sometimes collaborator Yorgos Lanthimos) not seen since Chevalier (SFF 2015). In this hugely atmospheric parable, Landry Jones’ rough-hewn protagonist sees the future of his once-peaceful Scottish hamlet jeopardised – first by a suspicious fire in the village and then by the appearance of a mysterious stranger. Infused with Tsangari’s mordant humour and shot in tactile 16mm by Good Time DP Sean Price Williams, Harvest recalls Terrence Malick’s Days of Heaven and Werner Herzog’s Aguirre: The Wrath of God in its evocation of a bygone era with startling contemporary resonance.
Videoheaven
Narrated by Maya Hawke, Alex Ross Perry’s (Her Smell, SFF 2019), Videoheaven is an enjoyably intellectual history of video stores, assembled from hundreds of film and TV clips.
A passion project 10 years in the making from Perry – an uncompromising independent filmmaker and ex-employee of fabled NYC video store Kim’s Video – Videoheaven charts the lifespan of video stores, from their beginnings in the late 1970s to their near-extinction in the 2010s. Inspired by Daniel Herbert’s 2014 book Videoland: Movie Culture at the American Video Store, this rigorously researched essay film remixes a wide range of film and TV excerpts to craft a razor-sharp pop-cultural chronicle, featuring everything from Scream and Benny’s Video to Muriel’s Wedding and Seinfeld. An ode to a bygone era that deftly avoids the trappings of a nostalgia trip, it’s essential viewing for any card-carrying cinephile.
It Was Just An Accident
This film by Iranian director Jafar Panahi has just won the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival. Panahi is one of the most prolific filmmakers from Iran and his work for over 30 years persists despite a range of obstacles, from banning orders to imprisonment. His past films are being screened at the Art Gallery of NSW during SFF this year as part of a comprehensive retrospective on his work.
It Was Just an Accident begins with a family traveling on an isolated road, where an unfortunate bump in the road leads to their car being slightly damaged. At the repair shop in the middle of the night, a worker observes something that triggers a memory with immense repercussions.
With his new film, Panahi reimagines the Iranian road movie, taking the audience on a thrilling and devastating emotional rollercoaster involving a great ensemble cast. As Panahi says: “I don’t make political films, I make humanistic films.” Here he is at his most humanistic – presenting us with characters whose circumstances might well be very different from our own, but whose dilemmas, and choices between forgiveness and retribution, immerse us fully.
The Secret Agent
Mendonça Filho just won Best Director at the Cannes Film Festival for this rousing and tense political thriller starring Wagner Moura (Civil War, Narcos).
In Brazil, 1977. It is a “time of spite” for the country as the harsh military dictatorship imposes increasingly draconian measures on the population. Marcelo (Moura), a university professor, is on the run from the regime and takes refuge in Recife, where he hopes to reunite with his son. There, during the week of the Carnaval, he finds a safe haven with a group of outsiders, and takes on an assumed identity. But Marcelo can’t forget that he’s a wanted man – and soon enough he feels the tentacles of the state closing in on him. With all the tension of the best political thrillers, Mendonça Filho brings his trademark melange of styles (and his deep cinephilia) to the picture.
The Secret Agent involves body horror, wicked humour, and eroticism, all playing out to a typically tremendous soundtrack. In this detailed, vibrant and expansive portrait of tumultuous time in Brazil’s history – filled with unforgettable, brave characters – Mendonça Filho has made an intoxicating film that is powerfully resonant with our times.
DJ Ahmet
Charming, funny and uplifting, this Sundance Audience Award-winner tells the story of a 15-year-old North Macedonian boy who finds refuge in dance music and in first love.
Ahmet and his brother Naim are growing up in a family scarred by grief in a remote village, conservative as it is superstitious. The boys’ stern father has no qualms forcing Ahmet to work on the family sheep farm rather than let him go to school, whilst he takes his little brother Naim, silent since his mother’s death, to a suspect healer. Into this grim reality enters the beautiful Aya, who has returned from Germany in order to enter an arranged marriage. When Ahmet discovers a secret rave he is immediately transfixed by the music, and by Aya, and sees a path to a more joyous and free life.
Says director Georgi M. Unkovski: “I wanted to explore the delicate balance between tradition and self-expression, particularly within a small, close-knit community The film delves into the challenges of growing up in a traditional setting while simultaneously discovering one’s own identity. I was fascinated by the tension that arises when individual desires clash with the expectations of the collective.” With a mostly non-professional cast, Unkovski has made an authentic, jubilant feature debut about art’s liberating power.
Mistress Dispeller
This Venice award-winning and startling doc introduces us to Teacher Wang, a Chinese “mistress dispeller” – that is, a professional for-hire whose job it is to end marital affairs.
In China, a unique industry has emerged in the past decade: mistress dispellers are specialists in breaking up marital affairs – and their services come with a hefty price tag. When Teacher Wang, one such professional, is enlisted by a heartbroken wife, she proceeds to work her way into the lives of the husband and his lover, as well as the client herself. All three become entangled through her intricate and at times extreme methods. Director Elizabeth Lo, known for her beloved 2020 doc Stray, gains intimate access to her subjects, capturing deeply private moments and conversations rarely seen on screen. The result is a captivating and thought-provoking portrait of the limits of modern-day marriage.
Happyend
Set in a near-future Tokyo, a high school introduces intense surveillance of its students, inspiring revolt. An engrossing debut feature about politics, rebellion and friendship. Venice 2024.
When two friends play a brilliant prank at school, the principal is not amused – but it does give the administration the perfect opportunity to install an intrusive surveillance system, monitoring the students’ every move and issuing draconian punishments for infractions. While some students become increasingly politicised and rebellious, others seem unaffected, leading to rifts even amongst the best of friends. The young, predominantly non-professional cast give vibrant, authentic performances, capturing the frustrations and insecurity faced by today’s youth. With impeccable craft and ideas stretching far beyond the frame, director Neo Sora (Ryuichi Sakamoto: Opus) has fashioned an elegant allegory for our time.
Night of the Zoopocalypse
An action-packed slice of spooks and laughs about a (kid-friendly) zombie animal uprising in a zoo, featuring a fabulous voice performance from David Harbour (Stranger Things).
When a chunk of meteor slams into the mountain lion exhibit at Colepepper Zoo one fateful night, a virus is unleashed, with the infected animals becoming zombies. Dan the grumpy Mountain Lion (Harbour) and Gracie the wolf (Gabbi Kosmidis) reluctantly team up in an attempt to stay one step ahead of the wonderfully CG-animated fiasco – but as more animals become infected, their chances of escape diminish. Based on a concept from writer and horror icon Clive Barker (originator of the Hellraiser and Candyman series), who also serves as the film’s executive producer, Night of the Zoopocalypse is a colourful, thrilling romp that will introduce younger viewers to the spooky and silly delights of the horror genre.
Eddington
Joaquin Phoenix, Pedro Pascal, Emma Stone and Austin Butler star in Ari Aster’s (Hereditary, Midsommar) incendiary modern parable about a small town torn apart by politics. Direct from the Cannes Competition.
It’s May 2020. COVID is spreading around the world, and the town of Eddington, New Mexico, is the site of an increasingly fiery debate over the use of face masks. Entrepreneur and mayor Ted Garcia (Pascal) and the town’s sheriff Joe Cross (Phoenix) both enter the fray in opposition. When Joe decides to run in the next mayoral election himself, he sets in motion a quickly escalating series of devastating events. In examining this tiny town and its small population, Aster’s view and purpose is very much larger. With brilliant conciseness, Eddington touches on issues that so dominate American society and life – race, class, social media, technology, and guns. In what is sure to be one of the year’s most provocative and discussed films, Aster takes a long, hard look at his divided nation and sends a compelling and urgent warning signal to societies everywhere.
Kontinental ’25
Radu Jude (Do Not Expect Too Much From the End of the World, SFF 2024) returns with another scathing and inventive satire in this Berlinale award-winner about a bailiff with blood on her hands.
When Orsolya (Eszter Tompa) evicts a homeless squatter from a soon-to-be-developed building in the Transylvanian capital of Cluj, she isn’t prepared for the devastating consequences. The once pragmatic bailiff, suddenly grief-stricken, abandons a family trip to Greece at the eleventh hour. Instead, she roams the streets of Cluj on a haunted bender, all confession and self-castigation. In Jude’s homage to Roberto Rossellini’s Europe ’51, the celebrated Romanian maverick again masters the feel-bad comedy: at once darkly funny and truly sobering, Kontinental ’25 is perhaps Jude’s most condemnatory work to date, and a testament to the unshakeable conscience of one of the most important voices in European cinema today.
The Sydney Film Festival 2025 runs from 5th June to 14th June across various cinemas in the Sydney CBD and surrounding suburbs in Randwick, Cremorne, and Newtown.
Book tickets for the Sydney Film Festival on the SFF Website.
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