MIFF 2025 has it all, the wild musical of Tilda Swinton, porridge docos, Orwellian truths, and much, much more: it is the largest screen event of the year in Melbourne, and it is destined to be a cracker.

Melbourne becomes the playground of film lovers in summer, every single August, and Melbourne International Film Festival 2025 (MIFF) is back with a bigger and braver festival. Held over 7-24 August 2025 in cinemas in Melbourne CBD and regional Victoria, MIFF is the meeting point of the cinephiles of the city, to binge on the best of the world of cinema.

This year? It has it all: jaw dropping performance, apocalyptic musicals, adorable documentaries and last but not least a film solely about porridge.

But here, in our local guide to the top 10 must-watch movies at MIFF 2025, we picked the list of movies we think are best suited to Melbourne film-goers. Don’t say we didn’t warn you – some of these are bound to sell out fast.

MIFF (Melbourne international film festival) 2025 – the 10 movies you must see this year

1. Resurrection – Bi Gan (China/France)

Genre: Sci-fi | vibe: dreamy, mesmerizing

Bi Gan’s last feature, 2018’s Long Day’s Journey Into Night, became the subject of unlikely wrath in its home country when it was marketed as a sumptuous romance to Chinese filmgoers on a New Year Eve opening that saw the audience turn up in large numbers to fast forward into an opaque, mystical journey that ends with a 59 minutes single-shot dream that was captured in 3D. The Cannes award-winner Resurrection is just as mysterious: it is 160 minute film about the future and humans who no longer dream although a group of eccentric rebels does not conform to the odds. The movie not only cuts across the national history of China but the history of movies as well; on any day, it screams mad enough. ? Michael Sun

2. If I Had Legs I’d Kick You – Mary Bronstein (USA)

Starring: Rose Byrne | Genre: Dark Comedy
Who doesn’t have time for Rose Byrne? The Australian star is a solid and maybe not very highly rated actor who did not get many big, juicy, fascinating, grandiose roles … until today. She stars in this year’s opening night film as Linda, a Long Island therapist that looks after a sick daughter and is trying to cope with a number of intense crises. The production has tongues wagging so far that it has drawn such descriptions as monumental,tour de force and harrowingly brilliant of the performance by Byrne. – Luke Buckmaster

3. Sorry, Baby – Eva Victor (USA)

Genre: Twee Comedy | Produced by: Barry Jenkins
Twee awright! So back we are. Sundance award-winner Eva Victor (produced by Barry Jenkins) is one of several long lines of arch, obnoxious comedies that are peeled down to their bedrock fears: Frances Ha, Juno, Little Miss Sunshine, all movies by Miranda July, and any American indie rom-com that came along between 2010-2020. Sorry, Baby may be the very essence of twee: a New England idyll about a twentysomething professor of letters (this is Victor herself) who is so ineptly charming, with her jaggedness, that the emotional centrepiece of the film comes as a full-body tackle.

4. The End – Joshua Oppenheimer (Europe)

Starring: Tilda Swinton | Genre: Post-apocalyptic musical
J. Oppenheimer has gained the greatest popularity through his documentaries on mass killings in Indonesia (The Act of Killing and The Look of Silence), which are pleasant to the stomach. No one imagined his first narrative film: a post-apocalyptic musical, all in a bunker deep underground, and in a future also hardened by the climate emergency. Critics have been divided thus far: Radheyan Simonpillai claimed it was “intermittently fascinating” and Wendy Ide described it as “wildly ambitious” and yet “catastrophically self-indulgent”.

5. The Golden Spurtle – Constantine Costi (Australia/UK)

Genre: Documentary | Location: Scottish Highlands
It is the movie about porridge you never realized you required! The doco by Constantine Costi reveals the annual porridge making contest that happens annually in the Scottish village of Carrbridge.

6. Zodiac Killer Project – Charlie Shackleton (UK/US)

Genre: Meta True Crime
It is the year 2025 and all we do is watch true crimes. Any killer has a 6-part limited Netflix series. All scammers can have a podcast and a position in Dancing With the Stars. All Tik Tokers are armchair detectives and all Tik Toks are CSI.

What then is to be done? When you are a British documentarian, Charlie Shackleton, you attempt and you do not succeed in making a film about the Zodiac Killer. Then you do something stranger with the ashes, part parody, part celebration of the true crime novel (as Lanyards tells us it is full of amusing remarks on all its cliches and mannerisms) , part something more.

7. Orwell: 2+2=5 – Raoul Peck (France/US)

Genre: Political Documentary
Everybody would like to live in a world in which George Orwell was mistaken, and all of his publications did not happen. And unfortunately the work of this great author is still the one which is horrifyingly prophetic. The documentary made by Director Raoul Peck has analyzed the life and career of Orwell and has built a thesis around which he relates ideas in Nineteen Eighty-Four with recent events such as the attack on the US Capitol and the war in Ukraine.

8. Mirrors No. 3 – Christian Petzold (Germany)

Genre: Euro Drama | Starring: Paula Beer
You know sometimes it is almost masochistic to see a Christian Petzold film in the frozen depths of Melbourne winter and the last three (this one included) have been heartbreakingly chic films of beautiful and willowy Europeans swimming, sunning and pottering about half digesting some life-changing event or heartbreak. Paula Beer, Petzold long-term muse, is back, as a woman who is looked after by a benevolent older man when her boyfriend dies in a car crash on the way home, albeit there is a sinister haze around the rural cottage that makes it seem haunted. Then, at 86 minutes, it seems like a novella: hazy and sophisticated.

9. Journey Home, David Gulpilil – Maggie Miles & Trisha Morton-Thomas (Australia)

Genre: Biography | Narrated by: Hugh Jackman
My Name Is Gulpilil Molly Reynolds, 2021 After exploring the life and legacy of the unsurpassed David Gulpilil in her excellent 2021 documentary, this very tough act to follow is likely to be followed by a professional, Steve Patrickson. This new film, which has Hugh Jackman narrate the film and Maggie Miles and Trisha Morton-Thomas as co-directors, is the culmination of the story of Gulpilil, where he was sent to rest in his native land Gupulul, in the central region of Arnhem Land Australia.

10. Exit 8 – Genki Kawamura (Japan)

Genre: Psychological Thriller
The Exit 8 with its virtual reality spin-off into the movie since I am the huge fan of both original and virtual reality productions. It is basically a spot-the-difference video game where the player has to go to a sequence of almost identical hallways within a Tokyo subway station and has to choose between whether each of the environments are identical to the first hallway they entered – spot-the-difference video game.

How to Get MIFF 2025 Tickets

MIFF Members: Already on sale
General Public: Opens 15 July 2025
Where: miff.com.au + ACMI, Forum Theatre, Kino, Nova, and regional screens
Streaming: Some sessions available online via MIFF Play

Local Tip – Make a Night of It MIFF 2025

Heading into the city for a screening? Make it a proper Melbourne night out:

Grab a ramen in Russell Street before the late session.
Stop by Bar Clara or Heartbreaker for post-movie debriefs.
Or hit the Rooftop Bar if the weather plays nice.

Why MIFF Still Matters to Melbourne

Showcasing documentaries that might bring a tear to your eye and premieres of cult movies, MIFF makes the world come to our screens and makes us why Melbourne is the arts capital of Australia. It is not a film festival, it is a winter ritual.

Like it or loathe it, MIFF 2025 is a must-see as it has something for everyone; all that classic hype (Tilda Swinton!), the homegrown heroes (David Gulpilil), and the surprises (porridge competitions?).

Then get your tote bag, dress up and reserve your place. In the dark we see you.