Melbourne International Film Festival 2026

Dir Alex Huston Fischer, Eleanor Wilson

A fisherwoman lives on the fringes of a seaside village; she is unmarried, stinky, and constantly teased. One day, sick of her stuffy, narrow-minded neighbors, she orders a wicker husband for herself.
105 minutes

Dir. Harvey Zielinski, Australia 

After being mistaken for his brother, a young trans man adapts to a precarious new life in the rural town in which he was raised.  

City boy Jake is at a loose end. Unemployed, single and holed up in a granny flat behind his family home, he lives in the shadow of his cisgender twin brother, successful real estate agent Sam. On an impulse, he takes a trip to the remote country town of Sweet Milk, where his terminally ill, estranged father (Kieran Darcy-Smith) still lives, totally unaware that Jake has transitioned. When his dad mistakes him for Sam and Jake misses the moment to correct him, an unforeseen opportunity lands in his lap: to fit in as masculine in a place where nobody suspects he’s trans. Adopting Sam’s identity, he manages to connect with his father for the first time, while a budding romance with local Toby (Hunter Page-Lochard, Kid Snow, MIFF 2024) – himself an outsider in this macho setting – offers further reinvigoration. But the longer Jake spends in Sweet Milk, the more tangled the web he weaves. How long can he hold on to his secret, and what will happen if the truth gets out? 

Drawing on his own experiences, debut filmmaker Harvey Zielinski also stars in the dual roles of Jake and Sam in this fish-out-of-water dramedy supported by the MIFF Premiere Fund – a raw, sensitive tale about the long road to self-acceptance and the lies we feel we need to tell to fit in. 

93 Mins 

Dir. Adrian Russell Wills, Australia 

How do you separate a Melbourne-born Oz music treasure and cosmopolitan star from a resilient woman? Follow the threads of her story, in her own words. 

Tina Arena has been in the music business for 50 years; after 25 albums, she’s had enough eras to make other pop stars envious. Born in suburban Melbourne to Sicilian parents, Filippina Arena became Australia’s darling in 1976, aged eight, on Channel Ten’s prime-time variety show Young Talent Time. Her breakout 1990 pop single ‘I Need Your Body’ raunchily repudiated “Tiny Tina”, and she went on to score a soaring run of 90s hits … but self-doubt, misogyny and tall-poppy syndrome drove her to reinvent herself repeatedly in the UK and France: taking to the stage; seeking adventurous collaborations; and singing in Italian, French and Spanish. 

Behind Tina the power balladeer and queer icon is the woman her family still calls Pina. This world-premiering documentary from Adrian Russell Wills (Kindred, MIFF 2023) unravels her vulnerable yet tenacious private self in candid, dryly funny conversation. Also appearing in new and archival interviews are Tina’s two sisters; her mentor Johnny Young; and collaborators and admirers including Céline Dion, Lionel Richie, Katy Perry, Marc Anthony, Ronan Keating, Jessica Mauboy, Jessica and Lisa Origliasso of The Veronicas, and Client Liaison’s Harvey Miller. In bringing herself undone, Tina movingly shows how music has made and mended her. 

90 Mins

Dir. Iain Forsyth, Jane Pollard, UK 

From chart-topper to tabloid fodder and back again, the legendary British rock balladeer Marianne Faithfull reflects candidly on her storied past. 

Plucked from obscurity by the manager of The Rolling Stones, Marianne Faithfull had her first hit in 1964 with ‘As Tears Go By’. She was 17. Hers would be a monumental career spanning six decades, punctuated by both high-profile love affairs and highly publicised struggles with drug abuse, anorexia and homelessness. But, for all its wealth of archival materials, Broken English is no conventional rock doc. Here, in a playful but sincere twist, the husky-voiced chanteuse is interviewed by a record keeper (George MacKay, Rose of Nevada, MIFF 2026) at the fictional Ministry of Not Forgetting – a bureaucratic institution overseen by none other than Tilda Swinton – while luminaries such as Courtney Love and Beth Orton chime in with their own reflections.  

Directors Iain Forsyth and Jane Pollard have specialised in immersive, form-defying documentaries built around musicians, from Nick Cave in 20,000 Days on Earth (MIFF 2014) to Emiliana Torrini in The Extraordinary Miss Flower (MIFF 2025). This inventive portrait of a legendary singer-songwriter is suffused with a particular, unanticipated pathos: Faithfull died in January 2025 while the film was still in production, making the rendition we see of her 2018 track ‘Misunderstanding’ – accompanied by Cave and Warren Ellis – her final recorded performance. 

“Broken English is not just a documentary about Faithfull, it’s a film which is fully infused with her distinctive spirit – it is free, candid and rebellious to the core.” – Screen Daily 

99 Mins 

Dir. THUNDERLIPS, New Zealand 

A twentysomething homebody is stuck carrying more than she bargained for in this gleefully gloopy Kiwi body-horror comedy. 

After an unusual erotic encounter with a neighbour in the laundry room of their apartment building, Mary finds herself unexpectedly knocked up. But worse, Mary’s unborn offspring is a rapidly gestating alien foetus – the baby daddy is part alien (the part that counts). An underachieving millennial who still lives with her oversharing, open-minded-to-the-extreme single mother, Mary must now navigate dismissive doctors, a useless parenting partner and a whole host of discombobulating physical side effects if she is to reclaim autonomy over her body and her life.  

Expanding on their 2024 short, director duo Sean Wallace and Jordan Mark Windsor – aka THUNDERLIPS – bring an unmistakeably Kiwi self-deprecating humour to this outrageous comedy positively dripping in extraterrestrial bodily fluids. Hannah Lynch (Petrol, MIFF 2022) shines as the unapologetically pissed-off Mary, and the visceral practical effects and tentacled prosthetics are a sight to behold.  

“If you like big swing cinema, you won’t want to miss this one … an absolutely deranged story that’s hilarious, heartfelt, and unapologetically gross.” – Mashable  

95 Mins 

MIFF is thrilled to announce the four distinctive projects selected for Sovereign Shorts.

MIFF, VicScreen and National Indigenous Television (NITV) sought original and compelling short documentary proposals from Victorian-based First Peoples writers and directors exploring the theme of Treaty.

The successful teams and their projects are:

Dya (Country)
Writer/Director/Producer: Tracey Rigney (Wotjobaluk, Ngarrindjeri)
Co-producers: Desiree Cross and Joel Boyd
A regional First Nations filmmaker explores the Wotjobaluk Nations’ underdog fight for recognition, revealing Treaty as a complex mosaic with deeply local, lived realities unfolding far from Melbourne.

Protest on the Dancefloor
Writer/Director: Talia Liddle (Arrernte and Luritja)
Producer: Travis Cloudy-Hengsen (Torres Strait – Ugar, Iama, Erub)
Protest on the Dancefloor explores how Blackfellas in Melbourne use music and dancefloors to create spaces of sovereignty, connection and liberation amidst an ever-changing political climate.

Queens To The Front
Writer/Director/Producer: Tammy Lee Rock (Pakana)
Producers: Carter Looker and Sophie Somerville
Queens To The Front is a dialogue between filmmaker Tammy Lee Rock and public figure Senator Lidia Thorpe, revealing insights into the personal impact of Treaty and sovereignty.

Slow Hours
Writer/Director/Producer: Theo McMahon (Bundjalung)
Co-producer: Lucie McMahon
Through the poetic, hopeful lens of Amelia, a young Indigenous teenager, we encounter the intertwined lives of three women, each embodying a different stage in the fragile evolution of First Nations hope in Victoria’s fight for sovereignty.

Dir. Dan Jackson,  Australia

As Ecuador erupts in protest, the custodian of a threatened way of life contemplates the future of his family line and his people.

In a village deep in the Amazon jungle, Indigenous shaman Rafael Santi practises the sacred customs of his ancestors. As this community elder approaches the end of his life, he hopes to pass his mantle on to his teenage grandson, a devoted student who is nonetheless torn between this heavy responsibility and the opportunities offered by Western education. What’s at stake here is more than just one community’s future, however: this crisis of succession occurs against the backdrop of rising economic pressures and a steady incursion of mining and oil corporations into the Amazon, granted a green light by Ecuador’s pro-market government. As the nation’s Indigenous peoples launch a countrywide protest that takes them to the streets of Quito and into violent conflict with armed forces, Santi uses the traditional medicine of ayahuasca to seek answers from the spirit world.

Australian filmmaker Dan Jackson spent over a decade developing connections with the Indigenous communities of Amazanga to tell this intimate story of one man, his family and an age-old struggle – one that echoes around the world, including here in Australia – between postcolonial states and the peoples they displaced but haven’t defeated. Presenting raw recordings of protest alongside stunning photography of the jungle landscape, archival footage of generations past and vivid depictions of hallucinogenic experience, this MIFF Premiere Fund–supported documentary takes us on a journey deep into the fault lines of our modern world and out into the realm beyond.