Discoveries from Australia World Cinema

A terminally ill young woman wants to live her life out in peace. Her best friend, however, has other ideas.

“We purify, filter, sift, rectify, unburden… stupefy, impose, stun, devastate, overwhelm… radiate, bewitch…” But why? Why do we cause so much damage to our own environment, and then spend so much in attempting to recreate it after our own designs? What is it that underlies our desire to transform the natural world into something of our own making?

The prying eyes of town are quick to notice the growing friendship between a new teacher and the headmistress.

A seedy virus is spreadding... is a digital epidemic closer than we think?

Country girl Anne Maxwell is receiving lessons from choir master Karl Krona, who is secretly a German sympathiser.

1927 Australian silent film

Deena has lost her father, and with him, any sense of calm. Trapped inside a crowded house brimming with relatives, rituals, and unspoken family tensions, she aches for something simple: a moment alone.

The Tiffany Group was formed to raise money for Guide Dogs for the Blind Association of NSW, holding dog shows, drag shows, balls, and other events. Initially these events supported wider community groups, but in later years provided increasing support to the LGBTIQ+ community (or gay and lesbian community as it was termed in the 1980s), in particular HIV/AIDS support. In this clip we see a Tiffany Dog Show from 1968, held in a suburban park, it included a number of events, but was mostly an opportunity for socialising.

Inspired by 'The Egg Theory' Story by Andy Weir. A boy wakes up on a cliff with God.

From flow to pros, DOWN HERE is a mash up of new and luminary faces that rock with Indy and rip it up in the land down under, a heavy look into the thriving Australian skate scene. Filmed by all the homies and masterfully pulled together by James James.

A month in the life of the North Perth Town Hall, witnessing a place where people find connection and what happens when it's left on its own.

In this documentary, Bengali hip hop artists share their stories of growing up in a struggling nation, using music to express their experiences with poverty, corruption, and the fight for women’s empowerment. Through raw lyrics, they address the harsh realities of their upbringing, challenging societal norms and inspiring change.

Through this unexpected and fun relationship with chickens, Elaine Janes is transforming how we see these often-diminished birds.

Christmas is celebrated in the middle of the Australian summer under a blazing sun. But even in the heat it is a season for traditional things; for family affairs and meeting with friends.

Kaugere in Port Moresby, PNG. Rugby coach Albert Muri is no stranger to crime and the raskol gangs that tore his family apart. His eldest son was killed by the police and his second son is serving life in prison. Dia, his youngest son remains his last beacon of hope helping him training the local rugby team, channelling criminal minds into sporting heroes. As Desmond is pardoned and gets out of prison, the question arises: what future is there in a settlement that more closely resembles a slum and where everyone lacks everything?

The battle of Eureka Stockade was an event of great significance in Australian history, in which gold miners from around the world rebelled against an unfair Miners' Tax and the way in which it was administered by the colonial government. In 1973, to commemorate its 119th anniversary, the original Eureka flag was unveiled by the Prime Minister Gough Whitlam at the Ballarat Fine Art Gallery in Victoria. In his speech Mr Whitlam identified the Eureka Stockade with the birth of democracy in Australia and Immigration minister Al Grassby read verses by the people's poet Henry Lawson in honour of the occasion.

Amidst a political campaign to represent his people in a post-WWII British Government, a Punjabi community leader faces unexpected opposition from a member of his own flesh and blood.

An undercover cop must eliminate a high profile target, to save her family

A documentary about The House That ADHD Built

The Sydney suburb of Marrickville has Australia’s ‘first, largest and longest-surviving community centre’; it is shown here in the 1970s.

Sequel to 2021's 'Student Restoring Corps'.

Set in a liminal desert space, The Road (Ճանապարհ) contemplates how it feels to be in the world at this moment through overlapping narratives of isolation and connection. The stories of five sets of characters, suspended in time and space, unfold and collide on the very same road, set against a soundtrack by the Armenian-Australian jazz band, Zela Margossian Quintet. “Each of the five narratives in our work are centred around decisive moments in people’s lives; from this point forward these characters will be forever changed as they undergo some sort of renewal, redemption or transcendence,” says director Charlotte Mungomery. “We were also interested in the conceptual and almost existential notion of a road and humanity’s attempt to control the uncontrollable and tame the untameable.”

A unique tribe of rainforest nomads living in Sarawak, Borneo, are being logged out of existence after 40,000 years of living at one with their jungle. Bruno Manser is living with them and is helping to get their plight to the outside world before it is too late.

A mafia don and 4 members sit down for a game of Monopoly.

When Mary, a fiercely independent woman with vision impairment, has a mishap, a friendly stranger steps in to help. The two bond – but Mary notices all isn’t quite as it seems.

In a very special one-night-only event, Australian theatre and music sensation Kate Miller-Heidke will join the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, performing songs from her award-winning opera The Rabbits and popular hits featured on her new album 'The Best of Kate Miller-Heidke: Part One'.

Falling out of touch with his wife, a jaded community playwright secretly exploits the private affairs of his marriage in an attempt to finally create something authentic.

State vs State in what is historically the greatest competition battle in all of the NRL Series. It's QLD vs NSW in what will be one of the greatest showdowns of the year in the first gane of the 2023 State of Origin Series.

On a night out, Paul convinces Ian to experiment with a drug and together venture down the rabbit hole. Moments after taking the pill, Ian's secret feelings for Paul are awakened, leading him to a second world where a truth that will forever change his reality is exposed.

When two deafblind women ask a theater director to help them make a show about being deaf and blind, never in their wildest dreams did they imagine it would become an award-winning show.

Matri Linear B takes the expressive powers of the Earth’s surface as “speaking landscapes” as its starting point, as agencies of a statement, while exploring how we can learn to see them. Central for the project’s second part, Surfacing Earth, are the cosmologies and land rights politics of indigenous Australians in Yuendumu and Tijikala in the Northern Territories. They appear as a horizon and boundary in a transmitted cosmology that is over 40,000 years old. They require a way of thinking about the relativity of space, which, according to astrophysicist Arturo Escobar, “is not to be thought about with universal concepts, but with several universes at the same time that can be interconnected…”

Every night around Australia, native possums scamper across city rooftops in an endless quest for food and shelter. Forced out of their bush habitats by encroaching development, these mischievous marsupials swarm into cities where their raucous noise and destructive appetites bring them few friends. They live in our roofs, pillage our fruit trees, plunder our flowers and pee on our paths. And when possums and people fight for real estate it’s war!

Berlin, 1934: John Flaus plays Goethe, the puppeteer whose mechanical clockwork knife-throwing act is under surveillance by a slimy SS agent (Heinz Boeck). The showdown comes at a New York presentation of the show.

The emotional stakes are high for the Sutherland family and those closest to them. A terrible dilemma faces the much-loved sisters Dani and Kristy as Summer Bay sees the return of Dani’s attacker - and Kristy’s soul-mate - Kane Phillips.

Filmmaker Michael Lee puts pictures to his daughter, Kathleen Mary Lee's performance of her song "The Quiet Game".

The 1988 Australian bicentenary prompted many artistic events and contemporary expressions of Australia's living cultures. One of the most remarkable of these was the first memorial ever created by Aborigines for Aborigines - two hundred bone burial poles were carved and painted by Arnhem land artists to honour the deceased of the past - lost people, lost tribes, lost languages. This unique Aboriginal Memorial captures this spiritual event. This collection seeks to reassure surviving Aboriginal Australians that there is a living continuity of traditions. -Ronin Films

While celebrating their mother's impromptu visit to Australia, the reunion is short lived as Zara learns of her mother's plans to take her younger sister back to Somalia to have her circumcised. Needing to flee the family home, Zara reaches out to Maya, an old friend from the same community. Despite aiding in the escape, Maya ultimately betrays Zara, bringing the sisters back home to face the consequences alone.

Coming home as usual, John is soon to leave for his date, but it appears his brother James has something else planned for him... a game.

In the wake of 5 other High Schoolers disappearing from their hometown, Harris, Will and Norman must work together to find their friend and bring him back home.

A brutal clash between dominance and submission as Jessie makes a journey to her past.

An Australian film

About that feeling when your feet are sore.

Of all the places Adam thought he would be on his wedding day, trapped in the mens bathroom is not one of them.

A cup of tea might not solve every problem but it can act as a kind of punctuation for life’s travails.

Lonely and struggling with getting older, Joyce eagerly anticipates a visit from her distracted granddaughter.

History is written by the losers.

Frank Byrne was forcibly removed from his mother Maudie at the age of 5 and has been searching and yearning for her almost all of his life.

In this personal documentary, a daughter uncovers the controversial choices that her father made in order to survive the Holocaust.

Music is the magic carpet ride to escape the hard gravity pull of an unhappy home.

This true classic from 1980 features the incredible surfing performances of Australia's Simon Anderson, Chris Byrne, Terry Fitzgerald, Wayne Lynch, Mark Warren, Col Smith and Mark Richards. Plus heavyweight Hawaii talent Dane Kealoha, Bobby Owens, Larry Bertlemann, Mark Liddell, Mark Foo, Buzzy Kerbox, Rory Russell, Reno Abellira and South Africa's Shaun Tomson. Fantasea opens with a powerful animated sequence that dissolves into one of Greenough's tube shots filmed from a camera mounted on his back and sets the mood for a full-on surfing epic covering Australia, South Africa and Hawaii.

A poetic animated portrait of scientist Nick Holmes and his work preventing extinctions on islands.

“For many years I had wanted to visit the Rock, but I had never really had the means. A little funding from Germany finally got me there. I had read a lot about the history and mythology of the Rock and of the Aboriginal people, but I was only too aware that I, as a European, could never hope to get into or feel that mythology. So I decided to make a film about it from my perspective. I cut out all these mythological figures…lizards, emus, wallabies…some of them from drawings in caves on the Rock, and carefully employed them as mattes for footage I shot in real time. In those days hotels were very close to Ayers Rock [now known as Uluru], so I never had to go very far with my camera. I used filters and telephoto lenses to suggest a kind of unknowable aura…to show that there was truly something out there on that flat plain.” (Paul Winkler)

Jørn Utzon, acclaimed architect of the Sydney Opera House, tells the story of the design and construction of his masterpiece.

One man's inspiring story of hope, resilience and survival amidst the brutal fight to free East Timor.

An anthology of camcorder DVDs find their way into the possession of a horror fan.

Today is your birthday, and I’m on a desert island

Exactly one year after a tragedy, a young writer carries on through the night as though it were any other. What first appears ordinary gradually reveals itself as something far more fragile.

A widow grieves for her husband. Her sister tries to console her. Too little, too late. Truths are revealed, love is suffering, but at least family is forever ...

Buried Alive exposes some of the ugly truths about the nature of Western Democracy, the world media and third world colonialism. But the story of East Timor also presents the potential for individuals to effect change. The history of East Timor from its time as a Portuguse colony, rise of Fretilin Party, declaration of independence, civil war, desertion by Portugal and the rest of the world and invasion by Indonesia. Shows the struggle of Jose Remos-Horta to draw attention and support at the United Nations for the plight of East Timor.