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The Adelaide Film Festival has revealed the first movies in its 2026 program, giving audiences an early look at a line-up that includes acclaimed Cannes winners, anticipated new films from celebrated directors, and several documentaries.
This year’s festival is already set to feature anticipated films from around the world, as well as hot titles coming off big awards and receptions at other festivals, including Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma and Fatherland.
Here’s a look at the first ten films that AFF 2026 has planned to show at this year’s festival.
All of a Sudden
Oscar-winning director Ryūsuke Hamaguchi returns with a luminous drama set in France, where Marie-Lou (Virginie Efira), the director of a care home, forms an unexpected friendship with Mari (Tao Okamoto), a terminally ill Japanese theatre director far from home. Together, they discover new ways of caring, connecting and living.
The Man I Love
Against the backdrop of the AIDS crisis, a theatre artist refuses to surrender to fear, finding solace in art, intimacy and community. Ira Sachs’ deeply felt drama is a moving ode to those who kept loving, creating and dreaming in the face of unimaginable loss.
Josephine
When 8-year-old Josephine (newcomer Mason Reeves) witnesses a shocking sexual assault, her childhood is shattered. Picking up the fragments will test her loving parents (Magic Mike star Channing Tatum and Crazy Rich Asians’ Gemma Chan) to their limits in Beth de Araújo’s Sundance winner.
Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma
Hot from Cannes, be the first in SA to see Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma with AFF Film Club. Hannah Einbinder and Gillian Anderson electrify in this camp, bloody psychosexual horror from queer maverick Jane Schoenbrun (I Saw the TV Glow, AFF 2024).
Everytime
Winner of the Un Certain Regard Prize at Cannes, Sandra Wollner’s Everytime follows a family as they finally take the holiday tragedy once denied them. Beneath Tenerife’s subtropical sun, past and present begin to overlap in a surprising exploration of grief, memory and forgiveness.
Fatherland
A luminous exploration of one of Germany’s greatest authors captured in a brief vignette – Thomas Mann’s 1948 return to Germany from exile in America. His much-anticipated pronouncement on what should be the prevailing principles for the now divided Germany is contrasted to the relationship with his despairing son, Karl. As the daughter of Mann and sister of Karl, Sandra Hüller is magnificent – as is all the cast.
Phenomena
Inspired by his physicist father, Josef Gatti transforms scientific experiments into a sensory work of art. Captured entirely in camera without visual effects or digital manipulation, Phenomena reveals hidden worlds beyond ordinary perception.
Wolf
British avant-pop musician Patrick Wolf revisits the triumphs and traumas that shaped his life and music through a lifetime of archival material and a searching conversation with longtime friend Tilda Swinton. Delicate yet emotionally raw, Wolf exchanges mythmaking for vulnerability.
Yo (Love is a Rebellious Bird)
Anna and Yo are unlikely friends with an unbreakable bond. When the pair first met, Yo was 73 and Anna 24. Through archival footage, interviews, puppets and insects, filmmaker and entomologist Anna Fitch with husband Banker White, create a joyous and artful celebration of friendship.
Everybody Digs Bill Evans
Legendary jazz pianist Bill Evans is unmoored by loss in this hauntingly beautiful black and white portrait. Rejecting the conventions of the biopic, it drifts through grief, memory and withdrawal, tracing a private world shaped as much by absence as by the music itself.
Shine (30th Anniversary Screening)
The compelling and poignant story of a young man who defies his father’s wishes to pursue his dreams. Shine is a story of rebellion and individuality through the eyes of a pianist whose only form of self-expression is found in the keys of his instrument. The Adelaide Film Festival (AFF) celebrates the 30th anniversary of Shine and the new 4K digital remastered release.
You can buy tickets now on the AFF website.
Are you planning on attending AFF 2026? Which of these first-round films would you be looking forward to watching? Let me know in the comment section below.
[Descriptions provided by AFF]
