The Melbourne International Film Festival (MIFF) has unveiled its initial lineup for the 2026 season, promising a cinematic journey from 6 to 23 August across Melbourne and regional Victoria. For those unable to attend in person, MIFF Online will extend the viewing experience nationally until 30 August. This year’s festival is set to deliver thought-provoking and eye-opening cinema, featuring some of the most eagerly anticipated films of the year, fresh from prestigious festivals like Cannes, Berlin, and Sundance.
MIFF 2026: A Glimpse into the Program
The early announcements showcase a diverse range of compelling narratives and directorial voices. From intimate character studies to genre-bending thrillers and poignant coming-of-age stories, MIFF 2026 is shaping up to be a must-see event for film enthusiasts.
Here are some of the standout titles making their Australian debut:
Extra Geography
BAFTA-winning TV director Molly Manners makes a significant leap into feature filmmaking with Extra Geography. This Australian premiere follows two best friends on a mission to become more ‘worldly’ before heading to Oxbridge. The film is a funny, bittersweet ode to teenage girl friendship, drawing comparisons to classics like Ghost World, Clueless, and Booksmart. The narrative centres on Minna and Flic, whose extracurricular project – falling in love with the first person they see – quietly disrupts the cosy co-dependency at the heart of their friendship. Adapted by Miriam Battye from a short story, the film features remarkable performances from newcomers Galaxie Clear and Marni Duggan.The Sun Never Sets
Mumblecore luminary Joe Swanberg, known for Drinking Buddies (MIFF 2013), returns to feature filmmaking after nearly a decade with The Sun Never Sets. This canny and heartfelt love-triangle dramedy boasts radiant performances, handsome 35mm photography, and the sweeping Alaskan skies as its backdrop. Swanberg’s signature candour and improvised wit are on full display, evident in this Australian Premiere that marks a new stride for the filmmaker, imbued with a warm confidence.Rose
A major drawcard for this year’s festival is Rose, starring Sandra Hüller, the Academy Award-nominated actress from Anatomy of a Fall (MIFF 2023). Hüller’s tour-de-force performance earned her the Silver Bear for Best Leading Performance at this year’s Berlinale, potentially marking the finest of her career. Austrian filmmaker Markus Schleinzer (Angelo, MIFF 2019) crafts a precise and unsettling 17th-century folktale about identity and deception, drawing on hundreds of historical accounts of gender transgression. Schleinzer’s third feature is a fascinating and quietly devastating fictional character study that should not be missed.Queen at Sea
Juliette Binoche and Tom Courtenay headline Queen at Sea, an unflinchingly knotty drama exploring the strained relationship between a woman and her stepfather as they navigate her mother’s dementia. This marks the first feature in 18 years from writer/director Lance Hammer, whose debut, Ballast (MIFF 2008), garnered significant acclaim on the global festival circuit. Delicately complex and staunchly humanist, the film shares thematic resonance with and is as shattering as The Father and Amour (MIFF 2012). Courtenay and Anna Calder-Marshall shared the Berlinale’s Silver Bear for Best Supporting Performance for their exceptional portrayals of Martin and Leslie.Dead Man’s Wire
Gus Van Sant (Don’t Worry, He Won’t Get Far on Foot, MIFF 2018) delves into a paranoid 70s aesthetic with Dead Man’s Wire. This MIFF Headliner is a blackly comedic retelling of the infamous Indianapolis kidnapping incident, which saw a shotgun-wired hostage appear on national television and the captor become a folk hero. Bill Skarsgård embodies Tony Kiritsis, a bullish businessman convinced he’s been duped by his mortgage brokers and demanding debt forgiveness, an apology, and $5 million at gunpoint. Al Pacino and Dacre Montgomery (Went up the Hill, MIFF 2025) play the father-son duo on the receiving end of his grievance, while Colman Domingo (Sing Sing, MIFF 2024) narrates the unfolding media spectacle as a local soul DJ.
Minotaur
Winner of this year’s Cannes Grand Prix award, Minotaur is a powerful depiction of fury channeled with exquisite precision. Andrey Zvyagintsev (Loveless, MIFF 2017), having spent years in exile, offers a reinterpretation of Claude Chabrol’s 1969 classic The Unfaithful Wife as a mercilessly contemporary thriller. Zvyagintsev sets the marital and professional unraveling of a wealthy CEO against the backdrop of Putin’s war. Shot in Latvia with meticulous detail and a savage streak of dark humour, the feature marks the dissident director’s long-awaited return to form after a decade.I See Buildings Fall Like Lightning
Garnering the Cannes Directors’ Fortnight Audience Award, I See Buildings Fall Like Lightning presents one of the year’s most compassionate portraits of a generation that received less than promised. Writer/director Clio Barnard (The Selfish Giant, MIFF 2013) and co-scenarist Enda Walsh (Hunger, MIFF 2008) adapt Keiran Goddard’s acclaimed novel to follow five Birmingham friends navigating the fault lines of late-stage capitalism. The film explores their journeys from gig-economy humiliation to lonely wealth, as economic realities quietly dismantle the bonds forged in youth. Daryl McCormack, Joe Cole, Jay Lycurgo, and Say Nothing breakouts Lola Petticrew (Tuesday, MIFF 2024) and Anthony Boyle deliver deeply affecting, lived-in performances that ground the film’s social-realist rigour in profound personal experience.We Are Aliens
Also premiering at Cannes Directors’ Fortnight, Kohei Kadowaki’s debut, We Are Aliens, offers a bittersweet and beautiful reckoning with lost innocence. The film employs a dynamic blend of rotoscoped and hand-drawn 2D animation, recalling Hirokazu Kore-eda’s Monster (MIFF 2023) in its exploration of childhood cruelty’s lasting impacts and Akira Kurosawa’s Rashomon through its bisected structure, which fills memory gaps and presents alternative perspectives on past events.The Samurai and the Prisoner
Kiyoshi Kurosawa, the acclaimed genre master behind Cloud (MIFF 2025), adds the samurai film to his extensive repertoire with this adaptation of Honobu Yonezawa’s award-winning 2021 novel. Set within a 16th-century fortress under siege, The Samurai and the Prisoner pits Masahiro Motoki (Departures) in a career-best performance against Masaki Suda’s razor-witted envoy. The two men, on opposing sides of a locked door, are forced together by an inexplicable murder within the castle walls. Drawing on the contemplative classical simplicity of mid-20th-century Japanese cinema, the film is an epic crowdpleaser that demonstrates no locked room can contain Kurosawa for long.The Only Living Pickpocket in New York
John Turturro stars as a veteran pickpocket with a heart of gold in The Only Living Pickpocket in New York. This compelling, light-fingered Sundance debut from actor-turned-director Noah Segan captures the vibe of 1970s and 80s New York cinema. When Harry picks the wrong mark, his established world, including his fixer played by Steve Buscemi, NYPD detective Giancarlo Esposito, and his ailing wife Rosie, is violently threatened. Evoking the styles of Cassavetes, Spike Lee, Altman, and Elaine May, Segan’s feature celebrates the enduring value of human connection and well-honed skill, rather than lamenting the past or dismissing digital natives.Mum, I’m Alien Pregnant
An accidental alien pregnancy is inconvenient enough, but being an underachieving millennial still living with an oversharing single mother makes it considerably worse. In Mum, I’m Alien Pregnant, directing duo Sean Wallace and Jordan Mark Windsor, known as THUNDERLIPS, expand their 2024 short into a gleefully gloopy body-horror comedy. The film is positively dripping with extraterrestrial bodily fluids, visceral practical effects, and tentacled prosthetics. Hannah Lynch (Petrol, MIFF 2022) shines as the unapologetically furious Mary, navigating dismissive doctors, a useless parenting partner, and a host of discombobulating physical side effects as she fights to reclaim autonomy over her body and her life.The Airport Chaplain
Melbourne Airport becomes a purgatory of missed connections and heavy personal baggage in The Airport Chaplain. Hugo Weaving (The Rooster, MIFF 2023) plays a scruffy, rule-bending chaplain in a hi-vis vest attempting to hold it all together. Commissioned by SBS and set for its World Premiere at MIFF, multi-award-winning showrunner Elise McCredie (Stateless) and co-creator Jude Troy built The Airport Chaplain from a simple premise of a lost handbag, expanding it into a morally complex and distinct narrative. Melbourne director Bonnie Moir (Not Dark Yet, MIFF 2022) warmly illuminates a fully booked flight of Australian talent, including screen legend Claudia Karvan (The Big Steal, MIFF 2017) and rising stars Shabana Azeez (The Pitt; Lesbian Space Princess, MIFF 2025) and Thomas Weatherall (Heartbreak High).The Best Summer
In December 1995, Tamra Davis (Jean-Michel Basquiat: The Radiant Child, MIFF 2010) brought a Sony Hi8 camcorder to Australia on tour with her then-husband, Mike D of the Beastie Boys. What followed was the accidental creation of one of the great rock documentaries. Thirty years later, discovered in a shoebox while evacuating her home during the Los Angeles Palisades wildfire, that footage captures the Beastie Boys, Pavement, Sonic Youth, Foo Fighters, The Amps, and Bikini Kill’s Kathleen Hanna at Summersault. This was an upstart Australian festival with ambitions to outshine the Big Day Out. Raw, intimate, and buzzing with the scrappy underground camaraderie of a scene on the cusp of arena superstardom, The Best Summer serves as a wistful last hurrah for a particular moment in alternative music.
The full MIFF 2026 program, including the Bright Horizons Competition lineup, is scheduled to be revealed on Thursday, 9 July. Nominees for award categories and the esteemed festival Jury will also be announced in late July.
