The Sydney Film Festival (SFF) is perhaps the most significant event on the Australian screen calendar. Although two years younger than Melbourne International Film Festival (MIFF), SFF cleverly positions itself a couple months ahead of MIFF, ensuring that all the year’s biggest titles end up on Sydney screens first and foremost. 

My first foray with SFF was in 2024, when my eager self took time out of my first-year assignments and relished in everything the festival had to offer. Taking a year off in 2025, SFF’s 2026 program compelled me back into the warm embrace of the festival. Over three days, I watched six highlights from this year’s program, fully immersing myself in the preeminent cinematic experiences offered by the festival team each and every year. 

DAY ONE

Rose (dir. Markus Schleinzer)

Premiering at the Berlinale, Sandra Hüller-starring Rose made headlines after winning the festival’s Best Actress prize for the actress and immediately catapulting her into Oscar-related conversations. I didn’t think the film would make a particularly large impact on me—as going into it I mistook it for a relatively standard war film—but Rose definitely left an impression. Following Hüller’s titular character in rural post-Great War Germany, the film traces Rose’s journey as she masquerades as a male fallen soldier in order to claim his land and inheritance. Viewers watch Rose as she loses grip on the lie that thrust her into high stead among her community members, creating a fascinating examination of both 20^thcentury and contemporary preoccupations with gender roles.

I caught the film’s Australian premiere at Sydney’s State Theatre, a lavish venue that perfectly represents the agenda and identity of the festival. Part of the appeal of a film festival is being packed in with a thousand like-minded individuals, many of whom became notorious for continued spirited coughs and sneezes throughout the screening. I was lucky enough to be sandwiched by two gentlemen with equally heavy breathing, but completely different rhythms, each move that Hüller made onscreen accompanied by a non-diegetic cacophony of exhalation. 

Rose made for a fitting start to the festival: surprising, peculiarly humorous and refreshingly self-aware. 

Rosebush Pruning (dir. Karim Ainouz)

In an accidental rose-themed double feature, I hastily made my exit from the State Theatre and Uber-ed across central Sydney to catch a screening of Rosebush Pruning at Ritz Cinemas. While there’s something to be said about the affectionately uncomfortable experience of a packed-in festival session at a non-cinema venue, it was a welcome change to be welcomed into the lush environment of the Ritz. 

I added this film to my festival lineup on sole account of its cast, featuring Elle Fanning, fresh off an Oscar nomination, and Callum Turner in a rare leading film role. As I’m writing this, I’m realising I am far more acquainted with Rosebush Pruning’s creative team than I realised, the film directed by Motel Destino’s Karim Ainouz and penned by Yorgos Lanthimos collaborator Efthymis Filippou. Make no mistake, however, Filippou is not the collaborator for Lanthimos’ recent mainstream successes, he is instead the mastermind behind more polarising releases Kinds of Kindness and The Lobster. Perhaps had I been aware of the sensibilities of this film’s progenitors, I wouldn’t have been so taken aback by its content.

Rosebush Pruning will almost certainly go down as one of the most divisive films released this year—which is exactly why I thought it succeeded. It follows the internal destruction of a rich, disillusioned and unflinchingly incestuous family, whose heinous character attributes become their undoing. At a certain point during the film, I made a conscious effort to stop expecting a narrative from it and instead appreciated it as a parody of the ever-popular sexually deviant eat the rich subgenre in contemporary cinema, which very much lended to my enjoyment of it. When taken at face value, this film is without a doubt a comprehensive failure. However, if you allow yourself to relish in its self-serious absurdity, from the disaster is born a decidedly unqiue cinematic experience.

DAY TWO

The Invite (dir. Olivia Wilde)

The first of three films I saw on my second day at SFF, The Invite made for a resoundingly pleasant cinematic experience—perhaps the most agreeable of my time at the festival. Before the film, however, one issue did evidence itself to me. Whether or not this was an independent issue for films screened on June 6^th or it was standard practice across SFF, it appears that the scheduling team did not leave sufficient buffer room between sessions at the State Theatre, resulting in lines hundreds strong stretching out far across central Sydney populated by eager cinemagoers. While I’m sure there are circumstances that influence this scheduling, this just did not feel like the most practical solution, as festival volunteers roamed the endless line waving shining traffic control sticks and many ticketholders stumbled around lost and confused. Do we really need to be doing all this in anticipation of a mere film screening?

The Invite itself was a juicy and engaging piece of dramedy filmmaking, with Olivia Wilde resoundingly redeeming herself from the PR and artistic crises that plagued her last feature, Don’t Worry Darling. The film is a chamberpiece, set in Wilde’s character’s apartment and features only 4 characters. This intimate nature could easily have been the undoing of a film in the hands of a less capable director, but Wilde effortlessly imbues every frame of The Invite with eye-grabbing tension and belly-aching humour. Her knack for screenwriting shines especially bright here—a talent all Booksmart truthers are familiar with—the film features almost constant dialogue, and all of it feels incredibly natural.

The audience relished in the intricate chaos of The Invite, and the welcome reception from the SFF crowd hopefully points towards a larger-scale, public redemption for Wilde. 

The Academy Awards: A Deep Dive

Throughout the festival, a number of free talks were run in the basement of Sydney Town Hall, one of these revolving around the Academy Awards. Anyone who knows me would understand that this talk was a can’t-miss event of the weekend, as I am endlessly fascinated by the entertainment politics that plague the Oscars. I was hoping that this talk might offer up some well-considered insights on the role of the Oscars within the film industry and how the two entities influence one another, but unfortunately my expectations were not entirely met. 

The in-conversation event was much lighter than the “deep dive” subheading implied, and much of the talk was centred on personal anecdotes from the panel surrounding their thoughts on individual ceremonies, wins and snubs. While this made for a lively and engaging discussion, it lacked a certain degree of diligence. This was best evidenced by a discussion where panel members theorised about The Academy’s positionality on the use of A.I. in film, despite a recent and advertised rule change that prohibited any use of generative A.I. in nominated works. Also on this point, one panel member seemed to suggest that the use of A.I. in VFX awards and categories recognising post-production was an inevitability, which was perhaps a concerning standpoint to be held by someone on this stage. 

While this event fell short of expectations, it’s still very commendable of SFF to host free events like this, all of which lend to the identity and community feel of the festival as a whole. 

I See Buildings Fall Like Lightning (dir. Clio Barnard)

This screening took me and my cinematic appetites to a new venue—the State Library of New South Wales. Taking place in the Library’s downstairs auditorium, this film was immediately assigned a certain level of intellectualism by virtue of its host. I booked a ticket to this film before it won the audience award at Cannes, so the empty screening I had anticipated quickly became one of the squishiest sessions at the festival. 

This film’s degree of acclaim is inexplicable. Lauded as a compelling contemporary portrait of the struggles facing working class youth, I See Buildings Fall Like Lightning is in actuality incredibly heavy-handed and lacks any sort of nuance in its storytelling. Its characters are pithy, mostly acting as hollow vehicles for tragic circumstances to be thrust upon, and it mistakes its anti-capitalist positionality as something revolutionary to the medium of film. It spells out its themes with painful clarity, characters embarking on monologues that explicitly detail why their circumstances are unfair and why the systems around them need to change.

Not everything you see at a festival is going to agree with you, even if it seems like everyone else in the screening is falling in line with it. While it’s disheartening to be let down by a film you’re anticipating, it’s part of the festival magic to be surprised—for better or for worse.

Teenage Death and Sex at Camp Miasma (dir. Jane Schoenbrun)

I felt like I had an acutely personal stake in my own enjoyment of this film. Much of this had to do with the days of anguish I experienced thinking I wouldn’t be able to score a ticket to this sold-out session, but thankfully SFF appears to save seats to highly anticipated films and release them in bursts in the leadup, which eventually spelled out my success. My other two horses were that I had caught the premiere of Schoenbrun’s last film, I Saw the TV Glow, at SFF in 2024, which assigned a certain level of sentimentality to this screening. I had also just finished Hacks and think that Hannah Einbinder is something of a generational talent.

Alas, expectations are not always destined to be met. I’m not entirely sure why I thought this would be up my alley, as neither of Schoenbrun’s previous works really connected with me. However, Camp Miasma’s premise of a meta-narrative surrounding around a filmmaker who becomes enveloped in the mystery of a franchise she’s attempting to reboot was massively compelling. To Schoenbrun’s credit, she is probably the only working filmmaker who would have the ingenuity to come up with a plot that intricate, and some of the elements in Camp Miasma continued to prove the director’s unique set of film-based capabilities. The film does unravel, however, when Schoenbrun leans into the conceptual side of her cinematic thesis, and what remains is a sort of theoretical suggestion of an enjoyable film. While I’m not one to shy away from experimental filmmaking, being provided with a psychedelic thinkpiece when expecting a semi-mindless slasher is not a particularly welcome transformation.

DAY THREE

Leviticus (dir. Adrian Chiarella)

It would be remiss to attend SFF and not attend at least one film produced by a team of Australians, so I made sure that I caught Aussie horror Leviticus before heading back to Melbourne. The film’s premise was intriguing, a narrative revolving around two boys in regional Victoria who are constantly attacked by demonic copies of one another following their coupling. Queer horror is nothing new, and neither is Australian horror, but I can’t I’m particularly familiar with their intersection. Leviticus brought something entirely new to the table, and it was the perfect way to end the festival.

The film is thoughtful, complex and differentiates itself from other horror films by centring its action around an honest and tangible queer relationship. Director Adrian Chiarella hammered this point home in a post-film Q&A, he emphasised to his audience that this film’s horror would not have existed, much less succeeded, without the strength of its central relationship. “Elevated horror” has become something of a buzzword to describe anything vaguely corresponding to tropes of the genre with broader societal concerns, but Leviticus transcends this, paving its own path using the strength found in delicacy.

After a trip to Town Hall to watch a discussion with Sean Baker as a part of Vivid, my time in Sydney came to a conclusion. The films I watched at SFF this year were varied. Varied in their genre, thematic sensibilities, and of course, quality. The festival team without a doubt provided a cinemagoing experience that fostered thought and meaningful connection above all. 

Rose, Rosebush Pruning, The Invite and Teenage Death and Sex at Camp Miasma still have screenings to come at SFF, which closes up on June 14th.