Festival Programme

Films by Genre

Thriller

The Beast

La bête

Bertrand Bonello

Léa Seydoux and George MacKay’s fatal attraction endures across space and time in Bertrand Bonello’s audacious Lynchian reflection on love and obsession, mixing sci-fi, melodrama, and horror across three different time frames.

Birdeater

Jim Weir, Jack Clark

This Australian debut marks the arrival of incredibly promising new directing talents as a bride-to-be tags along to her fiancé’s stag do from hell. An audacious, rollicking deep dive into power, control and the rituals of toxic masculinity.

Black Dog

Gou zhen

Guan Hu

An ex-convict finds redemption in the bond he forms with an unwanted mutt in Guan Hu’s dynamically shot and darkly comic Un Certain Regard Prize winner.

A Mistake

Christine Jeffs

On the eve of a move towards greater public health data reporting, a medical error throws life into a spin for a respected surgeon and her surgical team; the downward spiral threatening all in her orbit.

Peeping Tom

Michael Powell

Critically and commercially loathed and dismissed upon its release, championed and revived by Martin Scorsese, and now restored in a majestic 4K transfer, master filmmaker Michael Powell’s twisted, voyeuristic psychological thriller about a serial killer whose chosen weapon is a camera is even more alarming – and alarmingly prescient – than ever.

Sleep

Jam

Jason Yu

A young wife faces a nightmarish scenario when her husband suddenly starts behaving strangely in his sleep. Does he have a sleeping disorder or is something more sinister afoot? Jason Yu’s whip-smart debut will keep you guessing.

Sons

Vogter

Gustav Möller

A corrections officer sees her placid work life thrown into disarray upon the arrival of a new inmate, a mysterious figure from her past, in this sophomore feature from Gustav Möller.

The Substance

Coralie Fargeat

Direct from wowing audiences at Cannes, Coralie Fargeat’s magnificent shocker closes out this year’s Festival in style and lays down her marker to take the crown as the new queen of carnage with this wildly entertaining feminist body-horror feast.

Tatami

Guy Nattiv, Zar Amir Ebrahimi

An Iranian judo champ weighs her principles and ambitions against the safety of her family and herself as government forces threaten violence unless she tows the party line, in this riveting political-sports-thriller.

The Teachers' Lounge

Das Lehrerzimmer

İlker Çatak

Driven by a captivating central performance, this unsettling Oscar-nominated classroom thriller thoughtfully probes the grey area of student care versus culpability, and to what degree our systems promote or constrain our humanity.

The Universal Theory

Die Theorie von Allem

Timm Kröger

Featuring numerous unexpected twists and plenty of Hitchcockian suspense, German director Timm Kröger’s heady sci-fi thriller takes us on a gripping cinematic voyage packed with astute film references and brain-melting metaphysics.