The Melbourne International Film Festival has unveiled its full 2026 program, with more than 300 screen works set to play across cinemas, special events, XR experiences, regional Victoria and MIFF Online.
Running from August 6th to 23rd, with MIFF Online available nationally from August 14th – 30th, the 74th edition of the festival will open with the Australian premiere of Wicker, the Sundance-premiering fable from Australian-born filmmaker Eleanor Wilson and Alex Huston Fischer.
Starring Olivia Colman, Alexander Skarsgård, Peter Dinklage, Richard E. Grant and Elizabeth Debicki, Wicker adapts Ursula Wills-Jones’s 2008 short story into a darkly comic tale of desire, superstition and social paranoia. The film will also compete in MIFF’s Bright Horizons Competition, with Wilson and Fischer attending the Opening Night Gala at Hoyts Melbourne Central.
This year’s program brings together major festival titles, Australian premieres, bold new voices and a strong local filmmaking presence. Among the special events are John Cameron Mitchell Presents: Hedwig and the Angry Inch 25th Anniversary, the world premiere of Tina Arena: Unravel Me, the return of Footy Shorts with the AFL and VicScreen, and the inaugural Sovereign Shorts gala in partnership with NITV and VicScreen.
The festival’s Premiere With Purpose Gala returns on Tuesday, 11th August with Selina Miles’ documentary Silenced, which examines the weaponisation of defamation law against women who speak out. The film features lawyers, activists and survivors including Jennifer Robinson, Amber Heard, Brittany Higgins and Catalina Ruiz-Navarro; read our review here from this year’s Sundance Film Festival.
A major new addition for 2026 is the Armani Beauty Cinema Club, a curated strand opening with Graham Parkes’ SXSW-winning romantic comedy Wishful Thinking, starring Lewis Pullman and Maya Hawke. Other titles in the strand include Rose of Nevada, Kim Novak’s Vertigo, Nino, La Bola Negra and Mile End Kicks.
MIFF’s Family Gala will present the Australian premiere of DreamWorks Animation’s Forgotten Island, written and directed by Puss in Boots: The Last Wish filmmakers Joel Crawford and Januel Mercado. The voice cast includes H.E.R., Liza Soberano, Dave Franco, Lea Salonga, Manny Jacinto, Dolly de Leon, Jenny Slate, Ronny Chieng and Jo Koy.
The Bright Horizons Competition will again spotlight first and second-time filmmakers, with titles including the aforementioned Wicker, Harvey Zielinski’s Sweet Milk Lake, Paloma Schneideman’s Big Girls Don’t Cry, Sophy Romvari’s Blue Heron, Félix de Givry’s Goodbye, Cruel World, Beth de Araújo’s Sundance-winning Josephine, Marine Atlan’s La Gradiva, Abinash Bikram Shah’s Elephants in the Fog, and Hossein Keshavarz and Maryam Ataei’s The Friend’s House Is Here. The Bright Horizons Award carries a $140,000 prize.
The Headliners strand includes new works from Pedro Almodóvar, Paweł Pawlikowski, Ira Sachs, Lukas Dhont, Rodrigo Sorogoyen, Gus Van Sant, Andrey Zvyagintsev and Gregg Araki. Highlights include Almodóvar’s Bitter Christmas, Pawlikowski’s Fatherland, Sachs’ queer New York drama The Man I Love, Dhont’s WWI romance Coward, Sorogoyen’s The Beloved, Van Sant’s Dead Man’s Wire and Araki’s I Want Your Sex.
Australian cinema remains central to the program, with the MIFF Premiere Fund presenting six new local features: Digby & Camille, Mad Rush, Sweet Milk Lake, Jebediah: Are We OK?, Death of a Shaman and Hard as Puck. Other Australian highlights include Facing the Numbers, Wilderness, Phillip Philadelphia, Our Effed Up World, French Girls, The Fox, Sentient, Time and Tide and Replica.
The documentary program features Adam’s Apple, The Siege of Paradise, Once Upon a Time in Harlem, Cannes documentary winner Rehearsals for a Revolution, Lucrecia Martel’s Landmarks, Ross McElwee’s Remake, Sundance winner Nuisance Bear and Alexandre O. Philippe’s Kim Novak’s Vertigo.
Music-focused titles include the world premiere of Tina Arena: Unravel Me, Grant Gee’s Everybody Digs Bill Evans, We Are the Shaggs, Summer Tour, Summer 2000: The X-Cetra Story and Broken English, a Marianne Faithfull portrait completed following her death in January 2025.
MIFF will also present retrospectives dedicated to Ulrike Ottinger, Kim Novak, Lisandro Alonso and the late Australian filmmaker Sarah Watt, alongside the returning Critical Condition series and an expanded MIFF Talks program.
MIFF 2026 runs in Melbourne from 6th – 23rd August. MIFF Regional will screen across Bendigo, Ballarat, Castlemaine, Geelong, Healesville, Rosebud, Sale and Warrnambool across 14th – 16th and 21st – 23rd August, while MIFF Online runs nationally from 14th – 30th August.
MIFF Members pre-sale opens Thursday 9th July at 8pm AEST, with general public tickets on sale from Tuesday 14th July at 10am AEST.
