15 must-see movies from the Sydney Film Festival 2025

It was a little wetter and windier than usual when the Sydney Film Festival (SFF) embarked on its 72^nd edition, but the inclement weather didn’t dampen my excitement.

Determined to see as many movies as possible across the 12-day festival, these are my top picks likely heading to a cinema (or streamer) near you.

Sirât

Capital letters CINEMA, you literally feel Spanish-French filmmaker Óliver Laxe’s Moroccan desert-set epic in your bones. By far my favourite SFF experience this year, it opens with a mighty rave, the thunderous bass shuddering your soul. Following a desperate father’s search for his missing daughter, alongside his upbeat son and valiant pup Pipa, they connect with nomadic party-goers as the world teeters on the brink. I like to think this is set somewhere on the timeline between Mad Max and its immediate sequel in the annals of deliriously good dystopias.

It Was Just an Accident

Scooping SFF’s top prize on the back of his Palme d’Or win at Cannes, heroic Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi’s latest is his most devastatingly personal yet. Having endured two stints in prison and house arrest for his impassioned commitment to cinema and documenting the realities of life under a theocratic regime, it paints an engrossing morality play. What if you encountered the man who interrogated you while blindfolded? Could you be sure it was him? And if it is, what then? That’s the startling set-up to a story that burns with fury, doubt, despair, hope and possible forgiveness.

Death of an Undertaker

Bump star Christian Byers unveiled his debut feature as writer and director in the city where this boundary-blurring docufiction comes to life. Set in a Leichhardt funeral parlour and predominantly casting real-life undertakers, this gleaming tribute to life, death and everything in between was over a decade in the making. It also stars Byers as Sparrow, an aimless young man finding his way in a place where so many come to say their last goodbyes. It’s the sort of boldly experimental filmmaking we need much more of in Australia.

The Mastermind

One of the best filmmakers working in the US today, Certain Women director Kelly Reichardt excels in telling character-driven stories with quietly unmooring hearts. With echoes of his luminous turn in Alice Rohrwacher’s La Chimera, Challengers star Josh O’Connor is marvellously hapless as an art thief without a clue in this Palme d’Or nominee. But the heist, as fun as it is, is just a pretext to follow this lost soul cast adrift in a beautifully shot film that thrums with ‘70s spirit, the Vietnam War rumbling in the distance.

Orwell: 2+2=5

Haitian documentarian Raoul Peck stunned with I Am Not Your Negro, his elegiac tribute to civil and queer rights champion James Baldwin. He’s crafted another marvellous, if more sinister, essay film offering a warning from beyond the grave, issued by 1984 and Animal Farm author George Orwell. Drawing on the visionary writer’s diary, it deftly weaves his prophetic warning about the insidious creep of fascism in the face of lazy apathy with the stark reality of where we are now in ways that will haunt you.

Twinless

When you watch as many movies as I do, it’s exceedingly rare to be so utterly flabbergasted by where a story goes. So – ironic, I know – I urge you to read absolutely nothing about writer, director and star James Sweeney’s second solo feature. All I’ll say is that he plays an intriguingly queer character who meets The Maze Runner lead Dylan O’Brien’s magnificently realised heterosexual dudebro in a support group for grieving twins who have lost their siblings. Forming a co-dependent bond, their odd couple energy fires a wildly unmissable ride full of hilarity, heart and haaargghs.

Lurker

While we’re on the subject of WTF films, it’s best to know little about Beef and The Bear producer Alex Rusell’s incendiary debut feature. Set on the outskirts of LA’s music scene, French-Canadian actor Théodore Pellerin – who made a startling impression leading Sophie Dupuis’ Solo as well as popping up in Ari Aster’s Beau is Afraid – plays an op-shop attendant who finagles his way into the inner circle of Midsommar and Saltburn actor Archie Madekwe’s up-and-coming popstar. Bedlam ensues in a freakishly twisted dance.

The Secret Agent

Narcos’ Wagner Moura is the dashingly charismatic lead of this soap opera noir from Aquarius director Kleber Mendonça Filho. Set in the Brazilian filmmaker’s colourfully coastal hometown, Recife, the same year as Jaws debuts, it casts Moura as an academic forced into hiding by a corrupt official who has sicced hit men on him. Drawing on everything from Ray Harryhausen-style stop-motion monster movies to mobster epics by way of political thrillers, its glowing core is a Tales of the City-like found family, as fellow undercover folks populate an apartment block run by Tânia Maria’s magnificently sassy matriarch and a two-faced cat.

The Blue Trail

Also hailing from Recife, Gabriel Mascaro has explored fascinating corners of Brazilian culture, including in his ravishing rodeo movie Neon Bull. His latest is set in a near future in which 75-year-old citizens are deemed surplus to productive requirements, rounded up in a caged truck and sent to a retirement ‘colony’. Not Tereza (Denise Weinberg), who makes a break for freedom down the Amazon River, with little help from blundering guys and a big hand-up from a queerly drawn nun (Miriam Socarrás). Encountering psychotropic snails along the way, it’s a trip.

All That’s Left of You

Cherien Dabis’ gut-punch film, which won the Best International Narrative Feature Audience Award at SFF, follows the fate of one Palestinian family, from the violent injustice of the Nakba on to Israel’s continuing assault on the West Bank today. Led by Dabis herself and informed by her history, it also features The Blue Caftan lead Saleh Bakri and his brother Adam (Slam). A monument to resilience in the face of unimaginable intergenerational trauma, it honours the lives behind uncaring headlines in the West, detailing how love remains even in the darkest, forsaken places.

Blue Road: The Enda O’Brien Story

Sinéad O’Shea’s bracing documentary honours the Irish writer whose novels unashamedly embraced sexuality in a way that was okay for James Joyce but scandalous for her, leading to book burnings at home where they were banned. Appearing at the end of her occasionally difficult but nonetheless well-lived life, courted by the likes of Marlon Brando and Richard Burton, the film also features the vocal talents of Wild Rose star Jessie Buckley, breathing life into O’Brien’s ballsy diaries, pathetically scribbled over by her former husband. O’Brien gets the last laugh.

Sorry, Baby

Picking up a screenwriting award at Sundance, Billions actor Eva Victor also acts and directs the hell out of her debut feature, playing Agnes, an emotionally bruised but surviving academic in the aftermath of a terrible assault. Supported by her best friend Lydie (Mickey 17 star Naomie Ackie), they form a united front against the world in a deeply felt portrait of female friendship in resistance to male violence. Along the way, it will wound you in the feels and then scoop you up in its gentle embrace.

The President’s Cake

Winning both the Caméra d’Or and the Director’s Fortnight Audience Award at Cannes, writer/director Hasan Hadi’s beautifully judged debut feature is set during the inexorable crawl towards Saddam Hussein’s toppling by the US government that once supported him. Though his shadow looms tall, it isn’t really about him, instead following two plucky kids from Iraq’s rarely seen on-screen marshlands as they attempt to scrounge together the ingredients needed to bake a cake in honour of the dictator’s birthday. Deceptively simple, there are multitudes just below the surface.

My Father’s Shadow

Nigerian-born, London-based filmmaker Akinola Davies explores the memories of a stoic father he didn’t get to know enough in this semi-autobiographical testament to the difficult history that gets in the way. Set in the lead-up to the violent overturning of the 1993 democratic elections, it casts Gangs of London lead Ṣọpẹ́ Dìrísù as a big unit trying to guide his beautiful boys (real-life brothers Chibuike Marvelous and Godwin Egbo) towards adulthood with or without him as the clock ticks towards midnight. A magical realist-tinged tribute to tender Black masculinity, it’s similarly emotionally discombobulating as All of Us Strangers.

The Golden Spurtle

Look, this Glaswegian might be genetically biased, but it’s evident that Greek-Australian opera director (!!!) Constantine Costi also fell head over heels for Charlie Miller, Chieftain of world porridge making championship the Golden Spurtle, his fellow Highland villagers and the competitors, including Sydney-based taco chef Toby Wilson, who wings all the way to Scotland on a whim. Twice. You’d have to be dead inside not to succumb to its innate charms. Just be sure to stir your porridge clockwise, for reasons made abundantly clear in this glorious ode to the proudly odd.