Sydney Film Festival: Official Competition

In 2025, the Official Competition celebrates 17 years of the prestigious Sydney Film Prize, which sees $60,000 awarded each year to the most "audacious, cutting-edge and courageous" film.

Direct from the 2025 Cannes Film Festival Competition are major new works from acclaimed directors. SFF 2025 retrospective focus Jafar Panahi also brings a new title It Was Just an Accident which reimagines the Iranian road movie; while Kelly Reichardt’s The Mastermind brings her unique sensibility to a 1970s-set art heist starring Josh O’Connor and Alana Haim. Berlinale Golden Bearwinner Carla Simón returns with Romería, a mesmerising drama blending family history and breathtaking fantasy, and Sydney Film Prize-winning filmmaker Kleber Mendonça Filho (Aquarius, SFF 2016) delivers the rousing and tense political thriller The Secret Agent, starring Wagner Moura.

Also straight from Cannes, Icelandic auteur Hlynur Pálmason follows Godland (SFF 2022) with The Love That Remains, a tender and surprising portrait of a family navigating separation; Christian Petzold reunites with Paula Beer in Mirrors No. 3, an intrigue-filled, intimate drama exploring loss, healing and the pull of the past; and Akinola Davies Jr.’s debut My Father’s Shadow, a poetic coming-of-age drama set during Nigeria’s political upheaval in 1993. Direct from Cannes Directors’ Fortnight, after a buzzy premiere at Sundance, is Eva Victor’s Sorry, Baby, a witty and vulnerable dramedy about trauma, healing and friendship.

Internationally awarded films in competition at SFF include Gabriel Mascaro’s Berlinale Grand Jury Prize-winning The Blue Trail, a psychedelic, anti-authoritarian fable set in the Amazon; and Sundance Audience Award-winner DJ Ahmet, a charming coming-of-age story about tradition, dance music and first love in North Macedonia.

Also competing is All That’s Left of You, a moving epic from Cherien Dabis (Amreeka, SFF 2009) that chronicles a Palestinian family’s hopes and traumas over seven decades, which premiered at Sundance.

Opening Night Film Together will also screen in competition at the 2025 Festival.

All 200+ films have been announced. A celebration too big for a small screen. See the bigger picture at Sydney Film Festival this June 4-15. Explore the full program via sff.org.au