Adelaide Film Festival announces first 10 films for 2026
The Adelaide Film Festival (AFF) has announced the first 10 films to screen at the 2026 Festival, featuring Oscar-winning directors, Cannes Film Festival winners and some of the most exciting women directors emerging in world cinema.
These must-see films include three prize winning films Everytime, Josephine and Yo (Love Is A Rebellious Bird) from up-and-coming women directors.
Austria’s Sandra Wollner follows up her remarkable and controversial second feature The Trouble With Being Born (Berlinale, AFF 2020) with another haunting work Everytime, a gripping tale on grief which won the Un Certain Regard Prize at Cannes 2026. The jury commented that this speculative fiction work is “cinema at its most necessary: unresolved, uncompromising, and fully alive.”
Josephine is the second feature from US filmmaker Beth de Araújo and stars Gemma Chan and Channing Tatum, in a career-best performance. Winning both Sundance’s US Dramatic Grand Jury Prize and Audience Award, Josephine is already being touted for an Oscar. Told through the eyes of a child, who has witnessed a violent attack, the film explores the fallout as the family struggles to re-find its moorings as they traverse this traumatic experience along with the legal system. Josephine has been described by Rolling Stone as “[An] instant classic … [Nothing] can shake the feeling that you’re watching something brilliant, singular, and astounding.”
Emmy-Award winning natural history director and performance artist, Anna Fitch, along with creative partner Banker White, won the 2026 Berlinale Silver Bear for Outstanding Artistic Contribution for Yo (Love Is A Rebellious Bird), an intensely creative exploration of two women’s 20 year+ friendship. At a rummage sale, when she was 24, Anna met 73-year-old Yo (Yolanda), who had lived a dramatic life. Born in 1924 in Switzerland, Yo was a suburban Californian wife and mother, when the sixties swept through and she answered the call to break free. Using puppetry and 1/3 size models, Fitch creates a replica of Yo’s entire house to tell her life story including her death. “This refreshingly quirky number has heart and charm in abundance”, reported Screen Daily.
AFF presents Fatherland, one of the most acclaimed films of the year. Directed by Pawel Pawlikowski, winner of the Best Director Award at the 2026 Cannes International Film Festival, Fatherland features incredible performances by Hanns Zischler and Sandra Hüller. The film centres on the relationship between the writer Thomas Mann – and his daughter Erika – actress, writer and rally driver – as they embark on a road trip in a black Buick cruiser across a Germany in ruins, from US dominated Frankfurt to Soviet controlled Weimar. Returning home after sixteen years of exile in the US, Thomas Mann has to face not only a divided fatherland, but also a deep fracture within his own family. With Fatherland, Pawlikowski picks up where he left off with his award-winning Ida and Cold War, exploring themes of identity, family, love and guilt amid the turmoil and confusion of post-war Europe
From Oscar®-winning Japanese director Ryûsuke Hamaguchi (Drive my Car) comes All of a Sudden, winner of the Best Actress award at Cannes 2026. The Award was shared by the film’s two lead actresses Virginie Efira and Okamoto Tao who play two scholars one French and one Japanese – who exchange letters about chance and risk. As the philosopher falls ill, their academic correspondence evolves into intimate discussions about mortality and a deeper connection forms between them. Among the very best films at Cannes this year, its transcendent realism elevates the medium, pushing cinematic art into exhilarating new territory.
AFF’s music strand is as strong as ever in 2026. The program will feature – direct from Berlinale and Sheffield Documentary Festival, Everybody Digs Bill Evans and Wolf – two of the best music stories of the year. Wolf is an Australian premiere.
British documentarian Grant Gee (Joy Division) won the Berlinale 2026 Silver Bear for Best Director for Everybody Digs Bill Evans, a virtuosic riff on the disappearance of the eponymous musician at the height of his fame. Just having recorded the Bill Evans Trio’s New York Village Vanguard live albums, legendary jazz pianist Bill Evans is left reeling after the death of his bassist. Depressed and drug addicted, he washes up at the family home slowly reconnecting to the world and his music. With nuanced performances and elegantly filmed in black and white, the world of 1960s New York and the suburbs of Florida are brought to life as are the emotional currents of family where some members met their dreams and others couldn’t.
After sell-out sessions at the world’s leading documentary event, Sheffield Doc Fest, AFF is thrilled to present the Australian Premiere of Wolf. Tilda Swinton converses with her friend, musician Patrick Wolf and elicits the story of Wolf’s irrepressible creativity, both fuelled and curtailed by tumultuous his life struggles. A defining artist of his generation, Wolf rose from the backdrop of early 2000s London, shapeshifting between indie popstar and avant-garde artist, he was a maverick of his time. All until teenage traumas, grief and his addiction collided, making music a painful memory that he reckons with in his seaside garden.
Phenomena is experimental cinema at its most wondrous – a psychedelic odyssey into the fabric of the universe, guided by Australian filmmaker Josef Gatti and his immersive practical experiments that blur the lines between art and science to reveal nature’s inner workings. Captured entirely by camera with no visual effects or artifice, the unfolding awe-inspiring hyper-real imagery is elevated by music from legendary Nils Frahm and an ethereal electronic original score by Rival Consoles, transforming curious observation into a hypnotic audio-visual adventure spanning from the subatomic to cosmological scales. Tracing the forces and elements shaping the natural world, Phenomena is both a kinetic sensory experience and science lesson, exploring the wonders of the universe and our connection to it.
The heart-wrenching and beautiful Ira Sachs-directed The Man I Love – which premiered In Competition at Cannes 2026 – features another extraordinary performance by Rami Malek (Bohemian Rhapsody) with Tom Sturridge, Luther Ford, Rebecca Hall and Ebon Moss-Bachrach. A slice of an art filled life at the height of the AIDS crisis in 1980s New York City, this is a tender and delicate portrait that celebrates love in the everyday.
And last, but not least, AFF is incredibly proud to present the 30th anniversary celebration screening of Scott Hick’s Oscar®-winning Shine. Premiering a brand new 4K digital restoration of the acclaimed film, the story stands the test of time, featuring the stand-out performance from Geoffrey Rush that catapulted him to international stardom, alongside the equally impressive Noah Taylor, with Sir John Gielgud, Lynn Redgrave and Armin Mueller-Stahl. A proud South Australian, Scott Hicks will present the film and reflect on his own stellar international career.
Mat Kesting quote: “Each year, as the AFF program begins to take shape, I am always struck by the incredible worlds where cinema takes us and 2026 is no exception. Nothing can ever equal the magic of cinema, come be a part of it. I am incredibly excited to announce these first 10 films and bring some of the most anticipated films to Adelaide for the first time.”
About Adelaide Film Festival
Adelaide Film Festival is South Australia’s premier screen event and one of Australia’s leading film festivals. All for Film, AFF celebrates courageous filmmaking and showcases local and international stories that bring people together. Come be a part of it.
