Discoveries from Australia World Cinema

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

A sensual meditation on sexual identity and transformation, death and rebirth of the spirit.

Daniel Folkmover is a cabbie who runs an illegal operation on the side.

As of 2015, 42% of Australia’s homeless population is under the age of 25. Perth, Western Australia also has the highest homeless population per capita in the nation. “Unsheltered” offers insights into those trying to fix the issue, as well as those who are currently suffering from being out on the streets, night after night.

When an introverted game developer with Asperger's syndrome serendipitously meets an excitable rookie gamer in a new VR game, he gradually realizes she is burdened by a secret that could alter the course of their blossoming relationship.

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.

An average teenage comic-book lover dresses up in a spandex suit to fulfill his lifelong desire of being a superhero, helping those around him, and standing up to his bullies.

Filmed in one single take, two film students talk about how to make a short film in one single take.

2001-01-26, Sydney

Jack Dudley, an English farmer, is married to Lilian, who is desired by the evil Robert Stilwood. While Jack and Lilian are honeymooning in Paris, Stilwood frames Dudley for murder and he is sentenced to imprisonment in a French penal colony in New Caledonia. He escapes and is rescued by a British man-o-war.

In 2023, a group of scientist continued to experiment with the Coronavirus, trying to see if the virus would be the key to finding a cure to all viruses, they ended up making a new virus, more infectious and more dangerous. Now in 2025, the virus is still strong, with no cure, and all of civilization live in fear.

Israelis in Berlin are among the world's fastest growing Jewish populations, drawn by the city's arts scene and culture of free thinking. But how is life for them in the country that staged the Holocaust?

AJ has been unable to come up with a script idea for months. His boss has been breathing down his neck. But, everything may change when he is sent to meet a peculiar old man…

The mysterious psychic Rosemerta mentors an eager new student, who inadvertently uncovers a malevolent plot hatched by a cult of dark followers intent on opening a hell mouth in their city of Newcastle.

The Landau String Quartet come together to rehearse. Together they make wonderful music and yet each has traveled a very different path to become a musician. This dramatised documentary reveals each musician's intimate story centred around the long journey they have traveled with their instrument. Leon, the first-born son of Polish Jewish migrants to Australia is destined to become a great violinist, but his life moves in unexpected directions under the influence of his abusive teacher. Julia loses her innocence and discovers her own deep sensuality through her experience with music, and a handsome conductor. Richard plays the violin to escape his stifling suburban family. He encounters the dark and fearful world of his own psyche on his travels to the city to play.. Christie, a young cellist, throws off the shackles of her disciplined musician's life and escapes on an adventure with a handsome stranger, a journey that ultimately brings her face to face with herself.

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.

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'.

After a long battle with depression, Queensland rare chicken breeder Mark Tully is now on a mission to protect the endangered chickens to which he owes his life.

A nine-part LGBTQ+ drama series that takes an honest look into the struggles several friends in their 20s face in their bid to overcome insecurities associated with love, life, and their own identities. The series celebrates a different perspective on the queer experience against the backdrop of a humid Brisbane summer.

A classic Australian adventure film that shows Aboriginal tribal life in Arnhem Land and an incredible journey through the Gulf of Carpentaria and up Cape York.

This documentary provides an exclusive behind-the-scenes look at the "Beauty and the Beast" Musical, which is currently showing at the Capitol Theater in Sydney, Australia, and it will soon be moving to Brisbane in February 2024 and Melbourne in June 2024.

Penny and Aly promised to be together forever, despite opposition from their families, society and the law. They defined their own rules of a committed relationship. Seventeen years later Australia is preparing to vote on same-sex marriage, but their relationship is shifting. Penny wants to revive their love but when Aly suffers a stroke and her hidden affair is revealed, Penny is forced to discover what true love means to her.

Outback Australia has the highest suicide rates in the country, particularly for men, so when mental health motorcycle gang ‘Psychs on Bikes’ rolls into town, it can kick start a ‘life-changing’ conversation. Join ‘Psychs on Bikes’ on an epic road trip and ‘mental health mission’ around Australia.

A surreal look at Sydney, shot during 1988.

In 1993, Aboriginal Australian footballer Nicky Winmar experienced the ugly face of racism from the crowd at Victoria Park; a memory that still haunts him today, three decades later.

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.

In the Eighteenth Century, London was the biggest city in the world - a global centre for trade, manufacturing and industry. Bigger and richer than ever before there was money to spend - and much of that money was spent on sex. The capital was a hotbed of prostitution and promiscuity upon which tens of thousands of women and girls worked. This docudrama offers a scholarly yet sensational romp through the brothels, bordellos, bath-houses, and baronial bed chambers of the capital, with eye-opening accounts, from the time, anecdotes, rich and vivid illustrations and rousing dramatic reconstructions with a narrative featuring recurring characters. We unveil a world in which tens of thousands of women (and men) were used for sexual pleasure.

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…”

A mafia boss (Boss Ton) turns to his least competant worker (Joe Mafia) after killing every other one. Eventually Boss attempts to kill Joe but is persuaded not to on the promise of a large cash reward.

The Emu, Cassowary, Eclectus Parrot and more, over a hundred species are described in their natural environments, with great photography and pleasant narration, no scientific names, no insert names, great to watch en enjoy.

The life and times of artist Richard Ellis

Construction camp! A film about routines and fantasies on a building site, shot at World Square and featuring the work of dancer and choreographer Mathew Bergan. Commissioned by the SBS program Carpet Burns.

In the present time, a now broken up Xavier and Carlie remain friends; however, Carlie announces that she will be leaving the country, which causes both to rethink their feelings for one another.

A man's strict dating criteria backfires on him when he finds himself dating two people who seem remarkably similar to each other.

In a time when the gay community was discriminated and in fear of public persecution, partygoers took to the streets to show they would no longer hide. It was Sydney 1978, when Craig, a naïve teenager was swept up in the birth of a movement. Through a fragmented recollection, we revisit the chaotic events of the first Sydney Gay Mardi Gras.

In 1974, Narritjin Maymuru and his family are establishing a small settlement at Djarrakpi, an important Manggalili clan site on the northern head of Blue Mud Bay in the Northern Territory.

Two women explore queer romance during the Covid-19 lockdown restriction of 5 kilometres and an 8 pm curfew in Melbourne.

A devoted and loving couple attempt to rekindle the fire between them. A simple and topical cautionary tale.

A young man finds that the ghosts in his video game aren't the only ones in his apartment.

Laura and Jonathan are best friends who are both in content, stable relationships. But when their housemate can’t go on a pre-booked weekend away, both Laura and Jonathan feel they deserve the free weekend more than the other.

A woman comes home to find that her husband is talking in his sleep, but soon realizes that something else is talking through him.

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.

Following two rivers, one drain, one sea and one creek, it turns out that paddling to work, which ends up being mostly a drag, over four full days, is bloody hard work.

“Burlesqueing western conventions, this film has silent movie titles and music and a posse of shetland ponies. A gumnut satire of Westerns with a fine eye for the absurd.” (The Australian Filmmakers Co-operatives Catalogue of Independent Film)

A soul wakes up in a human body, in a clinical environment, unsure as to how they got there. They pick up a phone in the room only to be put on hold by a strange cosmic operator who eventually has to hard sell the concept of life on earth to this perplexed new soul, which on paper, sounds like a total farce.

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

Amateur film makers venture to make an 80s horror film in the forest until they become part of the horror, themselves.

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

An enterprise offers limitless opportunity to those wishing to escape reality, but this new world is not what it seems.

A hapless astronaut looks on as a dismembered tongue grows legs and begins to survey all around it.

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

A couple’s weekend at a homestay in the country quickly escalates into horror.

History is written by the losers.

"Antoinette is in crisis. The one and only Satan appears and may hold the key to her salvation or damnation."

A specially produced program celebrating the golden days of one of the NRLs most successful teams. This rare material covers one of the most astonishing runs of success in rugby league as the Eels took one Premiership after another!

A cynical young Indigenous man and his family are abducted by aliens. Leading them on a breathtaking escape, he discovers the aliens' origins, shattering his worldview forever.

Featuring performances of the Cat Empire all over the world, including a full length concert of their homecoming show at the Sidney Myer Music Bowl in Melbourne Australia.