The Adelaide Film Festival (AFF, formerly ADLFF) is a film festival usually held for two weeks in mid-October in cinemas in Adelaide, South Australia. Originally presented biennially in March from 2003, since 2013 AFF has been held in October. Subject to funding, the festival has staged full or briefer events in alternating years; some form of event has taken place every year since 2015. From 2022 it takes place annually. It has a strong focus on local South Australian and Australian produced content, with the Adelaide Film Festival Investment Fund (AFFIF) established to fund investment in Australian films.

Established in 2003 as Adelaide International Film Festival, it dropped "International" from its title after the inaugural edition, as it dropped its FIAPF membership the following year. It was, however, the first film festival in Australia to introduce an international competition, as well as being the first to fund film production directly.

The festival hosts a number of awards, including the Don Dunstan Awards (for lifetime contribution); Best Feature Fiction; Best Feature Documentary; Bettison & James Award; and others. In 2017 the International Virtual Reality Award was launched by AFF in partnership with the Australian Film, Television and Radio School (AFTRS), known as the AFTRS ADL Film Fest International VR Award.

The 2025 festival runs from 15–26 October.

History

Overview

An independently financed Adelaide International Film Festival (AIFF) had been held from 1959 to 1980. The idea of a new film festival to stimulate the local film industry and celebrate the 30th anniversary of the South Australian Film Corporation was raised by Premier Mike Rann in 2002, and a director and board were appointed. The Adelaide Film Festival Investment Fund was created to fund the Film Festival and other events.

After its first edition, the festival ceased to use "International" in its title, denoting a withdrawal from FIAPF membership. It was known as the BigPond Adelaide Film Festival, or BAFF, for a period until 2011, as its main sponsor had been BigPond.

Since the first event in 2003, the Festival has been held (originally in odd-numbered years) in 2005, 2007, 2009, 2011, 2013, 2015, 2016 (a one-off "Rogue" event), 2017, 2018, and a "pop-up" weekend festival in March 2019.

Audiences have grown year on year, with an audience of more than 64,000 people in 2018, and estimated to have had an impact of on the state's economy. The 2022 festival's audience and box office broke all previous records.

the festival had been held 11 times since, usually biennially but as an annual event from 2015 to 2018 (with occasional mini-events in intervening years

In May 2024, Adelaide Film Festival launched its "Adelaide Film Festival Goes to Cannes" program.

Locations

From 2017 to 2020, festival events took place mainly at the GU Filmhouse in Hindley Street (defunct as of 1 October 2020), with some sessions at the smaller Mercury Cinema in Morphett Street. the Warriparinga Wetlands, and at Alberton Oval. In 2022, for the first time, screenings also took place at the Capri Theatre in Goodwood, Her Majesty's Theatre, and Event Cinemas Marion, in addition to the two Palace Nova locations, Wallis Mitcham, and Odeon Semaphore.

Festival directors

Katrina Sedgwick was the festival's founding director in 2002. In 2007, Sedgwick introduced an international jury prize to the festival.

2013 was Amanda Duthie's first year as festival director, after spending eight years at the Australian Broadcasting Corporation and eight years at the Special Broadcasting Service during the 1990s.

After running the festival's programming from 2015 to 2018, Mat Kesting was appointed as the new CEO and creative director in 2019. Kesting is originally from Adelaide, and went to Melbourne to study media and cinema studies. He had become more interested in film while at university, He was program manager at the Brisbane International Film Festival from 2006 until 2008;

Patrons and board

In 2024 filmmaker Sophie Hyde took on the role of patron,

The board of the Adelaide Film Festival consists of:

  • Chair Anton Andreacchio, producer and entrepreneur, board member of the South Australian Film Corporation and Entrepreneurship Advisory Board saying: "Of the planet’s 1,000-plus film fests, only a select few pack industry impact. A few dozen more, by virtue of vision, originality, striking setting, audience zest and/or their ability to mine a unique niche, also rank as must-attends".

The Adelaide Film Festival's 2020 event was awarded "Best Festival" at the 2021 South Australian Ruby Awards, an annual ceremony which recognises outstanding achievement in South Australia’s arts and culture sector.

Jury awards

Don Dunstan Award

The Don Dunstan Award was established in honour of Don Dunstan, Premier of South Australia through most of the 1970s, and is presented in recognition of an outstanding contribution to the Australian film industry by an individual.

Past recipients have included:

  • 2003 - David Gulpilil, actor
  • 2007 – Rolf de Heer, director
  • 2009 – Jan Chapman, producer
  • 2011 – Judy Davis, actor
  • 2013 – Scott Hicks, director
  • 2015 – Andrew Bovell, screenwriter and playwright
  • 2017 – Margaret Pomeranz & David Stratton, film critics
  • 2018 – Freda Glynn, pioneering Indigenous filmmaker, and her family members involved in the film industry: offspring Erica Glynn and Warwick Thornton, and grandchildren Tanith Glynn-Maloney and Dylan River
  • 2020 – Bruna Papandrea, producer
  • 2022 – David Jowsey, producer, of Bunya Productions
  • 2023 – Sally Riley, producer
  • 2024 – Don McAlpine, cinematographer
  • 2025 – Robert Connolly

Feature Fiction Award

ADL Film Fest was the first Australian film festival to create a juried prize for best feature film.

Winners have included:

  • 2006 Still Life (Jia Zhangke, China)
  • 2022 Autobiography (Makbul Mubarak, Indonesia)
  • 2025: Vanilla (Mayra Hermosillo); Special Mention to Reedland (Sven Bresser)

Feature Documentary Award

The Feature Documentary Award, also known as the Flinders University International Documentary Award, was first awarded in 2013, with the inaugural prize going to Blush of Fruit (Australia, Vietnam), directed by Jakeb Anhvu. Since then it has been won by:

  • 2015 Speed Sisters (Amber Fares)
  • 2025: She (Parsifal Reparato); Special Mention to Sanatorium (Gar O'Rourke) be it arts, humanities, social justice, science, the environment or something else. The foundation was established by the estates of the Jim Bettison and his partner Helen James. Bettison created the Developed Image Photographic Gallery, co-founded communications company Codan and served as Deputy Chancellor of the University of Adelaide, his alma mater (an honorary position). Helen was an exhibiting studio artist, who served on a number of arts committees and was one of the founding members of the National Library of Australia’s Foundation Board.
  • 2015: Greg Mackie , founder of the Adelaide Festival of Ideas 2019 co-recipient of the Florey Medal for Lifetime Achievement
  • 2021: Bob Brown, environmentalist, human rights campaigner and former political leader of the Australian Greens party.
  • 2022: Pat Rix, artistic director
  • 2023: Uncle Major ‘Moogy’ Sumner , Ngarrindjeri cultural ambassador and performer
  • 2024: Angela Valamanesh, independent visual artist
  • 2025: Richard Leplastrier , Sydney architect

Change Award

The Change Award was established in 2020. Worth and sponsored by Zambrero, it is awarded "for positive social or environmental impact and cinema expressing new directions for humanity", initially selected by audience vote,

  • 2022: Luku Ngarra, directed by Sinem Saban and produced by Djiniyini Gondarra and Saban, about the history and culture of Arnhem Land
  • 2025: Trade Secret (Abraham Joffe)
  • 2024: Finding Jia (Alice Yang)

In 2025, the award was sponsored by Humanee. (Fr: Dieu est timide)

Audience Awards

Audience Award for Feature Fiction

  • 2022: Ribspreader (Dick Dale)
  • 2023: Poor Things

Feature Documentary Audience Award

  • 2022: The Last Daughter (Nathaniel Schmidt and Brenda Matthews)
  • 2023: Bromley: Light After Dark
  • 2025: Mockbuster (Anthony Frith) (Daisy Anderson)
  • 2024: Finding Jia (Alice Yang)

It has not been awarded since 2017 and is not mentioned on the 2020 list of awards. Past winners have included:

  • 2003 Cut Snake, by Blake Ayshford, was filmed by director Tony Ayres. was directed by Michael Angus in 2009. The film played at the Adelaide Film Festival that same year.
  • 2009 Writing Rain, written by Ben Chessell.
  • 2011 The Unlikeliest Hero, by Barbara Connell, was planned to be filmed by New Zealand director James Cunningham in an official Australia/New Zealand co-production, with completion of the film timed to coincide with the 100-year commemorations of Anzac Day. (However, it was last reported as being pitched as an animated film at the Annecy International Animation Film Festival in 2015.)
  • 2013 Tigress, written by Jane Hampson.
  • 2015 Martingale, written by Harry Aletras.
  • 2017 Petrova, written by Bec Peniston-Bird.

AFTRS International VR Award

In 2017, ADL Film Fest introduced the AFTRS ADL Film Fest International VR Award, the first competition of its kind in Australia, in collaboration with the Australian Film, Television and Radio School (AFTRS). Nothing Happens, by Michelle and Uri Kranot, won the inaugural award, while The Other Dakar by Selly Raby, based on Senegalese mythology, received a Special Mention.

In 2018, The Unknown Patient, by Australian director Michael Beets won the award.

Eualeyai/Kamillaroi writer and academic Larissa Behrendt, along with Michaela Perske as writer and producer, were awarded the funding in 2016 to work on their feature documentary project, After the Apology.

On 9 October 2017, AFF held the world première of the resulting film, and it was sold out at the Winda Film Festival in Sydney in November of that year. The film focuses on a group of grandmothers (Grandmothers Against Removals) taking on the system over the increase in Indigenous child removal in the years following Kevin Rudd's Apology to Australia's Indigenous peoples, in which he offered an apology on behalf of the Australian Government to the Stolen Generations resulting from historic child removal policies in Australia. It won Best Direction of a Documentary Feature Film from the Australian Directors Guild in 2018, and was nominated in three categories in the 2018 AACTA Awards: Best Direction in Nonfiction Television (Larissa Behrendt); Best Documentary or Factual Program (Michaela Perske); and Best Original Music Score in A Documentary (Caitlin Yeo).

Juries

Jury members for the International Feature Film Prize have included Afghani actor Leena Alam and Portuguese filmmaker João Pedro Rodrigues (2017); Palestinian filmmaker Annemarie Jacir and Adelaide filmmaker Sophie Hyde (2015); actor/filmmaker Wayne Blair and writer Lawrence Weschler ( 2013); Hossein Valamanesh (2011); J. M. Coetzee (2007 & 2009), Naomi Kawase and David Stratton (2009); Margaret Pomeranz and Ana Kokkinos (2007).

Jury members for the Flinders University Documentary Prize have included Eva Orner (2017); Beck Cole (2015) and Michael Loebenstein (2015).

Amanda Duthie, AFF artistic director and virtual reality champion, sat on the jury for the inaugural AFTRS International VR Award in 2017.

  • 2024: Claudia Rodríguez Valencia, Leena Khobragade, Matthew Bate, Stephen A Russell, and Penny Smallacombe of Blackfella Films.
  • 2025: John Sheedy, Jub Clerc, Marion Pilowsky, Murray Bartlett, and Pavel Cortés

AFF Youth

Adelaide Film Festival Youth (or AFF Youth) is a section of the AFF dedicated to young filmmakers. It hosts the Statewide Schools Filmmakers Competition, which is a competition open to South Australian students to submit their short films into.

Awards

Best Primary School Film

  • 2023 - Selma directed by Harrison J Thomas and The Tree Of Wellness directed by Buddhima Polwatte, Lily Gration, Steven Wang and Ava King
  • 2024 - The Forgotten Suitcase directed by Neo Dama

Best Middle School Film

  • 2023 - Unmasked directed by Aurora Chan
  • 2024 - Coexistence directed by Gabriel Zurbrugg

The low budget sci-fi thriller Monolith was announced as being the first project funded by the initiative. The winning team, comprising director Matt Vesely, producer Bettina Hamilton and writer Lucy Campbell, were given six months to develop, shoot and edit their film, which premiered at the 2022 Festival to much acclaim. Monolith, which features Australian actress Lily Sullivan, has since gone to screen at pop culture festival SXSW and will receive a general cinema release in mid-2023.

The second project to be funded by the initiative was animated comedy Lesbian Space Princess, by writers and directors Emma Hough Hobbs and Leela Varghese and producer Tom Phillips. The film premieres at the 2024 Adelaide Film Festival.

Past events

2013: 10–20 October

The 6th Adelaide Film Festival took place from 10 to 20 October 2013. This was Amanda Duthie's first year as Festival Director (after eight years at the Australian Broadcasting Corporation and eight years at the Special Broadcasting Service during the 1990s), having taken over from Katrina Sedgwick. Margaret Pomeranz and David Stratton served as the festival's patrons.

Scott Hicks received the 2013 Don Dunstan Award for his contribution to the Australian film industry.

The poster in 2013 depicted Screen Worship, which celebrates work for all screens—cinema, television, phone and computer.

2015: 15–25 October

The 7th Adelaide Film Festival was held from 15 to 25 October 2015. Amanda Duthie was again the Festival Director. On the opening night of the festival, director and screenwriter Andrew Bovell received the 2015 Don Dunstan Award for his contribution to the Australian film industry.

The festival opened with Scott Hicks's documentary film Highly Strung, and closed with Paolo Sorrentino's drama film Youth.

More than 180 feature films were screened at the festival, 40 of which were Australian films, 24 South Australian films and total of 51 countries were represented at the Festival.

As part of the 2015 Adelaide Film Festival, a public art installation was presented, incorporating a Laneway Cinema in Cinema Place, showing moving image artworks, and a 'Reactive Wall', where six artists created 2D visual artworks live in response to content within the festival.

2016: 27–30 October

Having previously been held biennially, the highlight of "AFF Goes Rogue" in October 2016 was a 4-day "mini-festival" in the in-between year. The first of the works commissioned by the Adelaide Film Festival Fund in that month was the Australian premiere season of Lynette Wallworth's Collisions (5–30 October). Then there was a free talk by Greg Mackie at the Adelaide Festival of Ideas on 23 October, and the events culminated in a 4-day mini-festival (27–30 October) featuring world premiere screenings of two films – Australia's first Muslim rom-com Ali's Wedding, based on the life of actor, writer and comedian Osamah Sami, and a special "work in progress" screening of David Stratton's Stories of Australian Cinema, directed by Sally Aitken (later released as David Stratton: A Cinematic Life). Other films shown were Gimme Danger, a documentary film about the Stooges, and a retrospective screening of Lucky Miles (2007).

2017: 5–15 October

At the 2017 festival, the theme "Vive le Punk" celebrated the punk movement's 40th anniversary. It featured A Fantastic Woman, Call Me By Your Name, a set by Adelaide punk band Exploding White Mice and Ai Weiwei's documentary about migration, Human Flow.

2018: 10–21 October

In April 2017, the Premier Jay Weatherill announced that a full festival, including new funding of A$1m for the ADL Film Fest Fund, would run again in October 2018.

Hotel Mumbai, Can You Ever Forgive Me?, rock documentary Bad Reputation (about Joan Jett) and The Nightingale (directed by The Babadook director Jennifer Kent) were some of the films shown.

2019: 5–7 April "pop-up"

In April 2019, a weekend "pop-up" event was held, to showcase Wayne Blair's romcom, Top End Wedding, and Adelaide filmmaker Sophie Hyde's Australian/Irish co-production Animals.

2020: 14−30 October

In 2020 the Adelaide Film Festival was scheduled to run from 14 to 25 October, one of the few events of its type during the worldwide COVID-19 pandemic,

To open the festival, the locally filmed sci-fi thriller 2067 played in seven cinemas simultaneously, with extra screenings added due to demand. One of the headlining films was I Am Woman, starring Adelaide actor Tilda Cobham-Hervey, who returned from Los Angeles in September. Other films included the documentary The Painter and the Thief, and High Ground, and the films include 22 world premieres, 27 Australian premieres and a total of 54 feature films from many countries.

The competition jury comprised playwright and screenwriter Andrew Bovell, actor Natasha Wanganeen, filmmaker Khoa Do, producer Rebecca Summerton of Closer Productions, and film critic Zak Hepburn.

The earliest screening at the festival took place on 22 August, with several early showings of I Am Woman; the final event, a documentary about Port Adelaide Football Club called This is Port Adelaide, premiered at Odeon Star Semaphore from 5–7 February 2021.

2022: 19−30 October

The 2022 edition of the festival was held from 19 to 30 October. Films selected for screening included Todd Field's Tár (starring Cate Blanchett, who appeared in a Q&A session after its first showing); My Policeman, with Harry Styles; South Australian horror thriller Carnifex, with Alexandra Park; Ruben Östlund's Triangle of Sadness; Brenda Matthews and Nathaniel Schmidt's documentary The Last Daughter; and Aftersun, a debut from Scottish director Charlotte Wells. Danny and Michael Philippou's debut Talk to Me, an Australian supernatural horror film, closed the festival. on 27 October 2022. It was announced after the opening weekend that several films would get a second outing in the week following the festival, including The Last Daughter, Monolith, Talk to Me, Tár, and Triangle of Sadness.

2023: 18–29 October

The 2023 festival ran from 18 to 29 October at five cinemas across Adelaide, with Palace Nova Eastend the main venue. Gala events screened The Royal Hotel, directed and co-written by Kitty Green and filmed in South Australia; true crime documentary Speedway, directed by Luke Rynderman and Adam Kamien; and the closing gala featured director Scott Hicks' symphonic concert documentary My Name's Ben Folds - I Play Piano, about musician Ben Folds.

2024: 23 October–3 November

In 2024, SA filmmaker Sophie Hyde took over from former patrons Margaret Pomeranz and David Stratton, who had occupied the role for around ten years. The 2024 jury comprised the CEO of Preciosa Media, Claudia Rodríguez Valencia; director Leena Khobragade; Closer Productions founder and co-director Matthew Bate; film journalist and critic Stephen A Russell; and Penny Smallacombe, who is head of scripted at Blackfella Films.

The 2024 event featured over 110 films from 46 countries, with 15 world premieres. The opening night gala film was The Correspondent, based on journalist Peter Greste's memoir The First Casualty, directed by Kriv Stenders and starring Richard Roxburgh, both of whom were in attendance. Kangaroo Island, a drama film directed by South Australian ex-pat Tim Piper (aka Timothy David) and set on Kangaroo Island, premiered on the closing night. Make It Look Real; and Film Lab/New Voices animated comedy Lesbian Space Princess.

The event set a new box office and attendance record.

2025: 15 October–26 October

2025 edition was held from 15 October to 26 October. In this edition 27 World Premieres and 37 Australian premieres were presented in the total 123 films from 27 countries. In the opening Night Gala Sophie Hyde's Jimpa was screened. It closed with the presentation of Wolfram by Warwick Thornton.

References