Light is always where a film festival begins. The screen brightens, faces glow, and for a moment the whole room shares the same pulse. That is what I felt as the Adelaide Film Festival (15-26 October, 2025) opened with Jimpa (Sophie Hyde, Australia, Netherlands, Finland, 2025) — a film full of truth, heart, and soul. Straight away, it set the tone for what this festival aims to share: stories that speak from the heart and linger in the mind. Jimpa’s realism touched me deeply — from the honest struggle to remember someone’s pronouns to the charmingly tender name “Grand-thing.” Beneath these details was something far more universal: a mother’s ache to both protect and release her child. That push and pull between love and freedom felt profoundly human. I was moved. I cried. Performances by Olivia Colman and John Lithgow rang true.
Day 2: Stories That Stretch Beyond Borders
After a morning of live talks — including one with film distributors that made me quietly realise I’d love to work in acquisitions — I entered The President’s Cake (Hasan Hadi, Iraq, USA, Qatar, 2025). Set in Saddam Hussein’s Iraq of the 1990s, this world feels vividly real. The children’s performances are luminous — fragile yet defiant — as if carrying the ghosts of their time. It’s no wonder the film won the Golden Camera at Cannes this year. Hasan Hadi is a name to remember — an international director whose storytelling transcends politics and nationalism, speaking instead to our shared humanity.
Day 3: Noise, Silence, and Searching for Meaning
Party night brought Sirât (Oliver Laxe, France, Spain, 2025), cheekily introduced as “Mad Max 0” I should have left before it started. I wanted the music louder, but the film’s slow pace left me restless, questioning the purpose behind its creation. Why this story? Why now? The final image — refugees riding atop a moving train — was the story I longed for, not the long pointless drive through the desert, reminding me that sometimes the most powerful light in art comes not from spectacle, but from faces and lives too easily overlooked.
Day 4: Faith, Fear, and Fragile Humanity
Lynette Wallworth’s documentary Edge of Life (Australia, 2025) felt like a revelation. A fusion of science and faith, this documentary breathes truth wrapped in grace — a reminder that mystery and understanding can coexist. People of faith and sceptics alike will find something sacred here.
Then came Penny Lane is Dead (Mia Kate Russell, Australia, 2025) — or as I would call it, Kat Be Crazy. A horror film set in the 1980s, it revived the spirit of classic Australian genre cinema, without the cringe. I laughed, I winced, I hid my eyes — and loved it. The shared gasps and cheers of the audience made the experience communal.
Birthright (Zoe Pepper, Australia, 2025) followed, holding up a mirror to Australia’s generational divide through biting black comedy. Beneath the laughter was a real sadness: what does it mean for young people who may never own homes, who must live with their parents far longer than expected? It’s a modern parable about inheritance — not of money, but of uncertainty — It was hauntingly true to the picture of Australia today.
Day 5: Between Justice and Mercy
A last-minute addition, Bugonia (Ireland, UK, Canada, South Corea, United States, 2025) — the latest from Yorgos Lanthimos — was well worth it. Much like The Lobster, it hovers between absurdity and truth, reality, and fantasy. Emma Stone continues to deliver extraordinary performances; her continued collaboration with Lanthimos feels comfortable.
Then came It Was Just an Accident (Jafar Panahi, Iran, France, Luxembourg, 2025), a delicate balance of humour and gravity. It handles trauma with surprising lightness — not mocking it but revealing the absurdity of moral choice. The question lingers: when we seek justice, where does mercy fit? Its tone might be playful, but its core is deeply ethical.
Day 6: Drowning Worlds and Voices That Rise
Black Water (Natxo Leuza, Spain, 2025) painted a haunting picture of Bangladesh — a nation living in the shadow of climate change. Torrential rains, rising waters, disappearing land. The people’s struggle feels both immediate and eternal. Its heartbreak is quiet but devastating: what happens when nature itself becomes the enemy and no one is listening to those calling for change?
Blue Road: The Edna O’Brien Story (Sinéad O’Shea, Ireland, UK, 2024) lifted the tone, honouring a woman ahead of her time. O’Brien’s words, wit, and fearlessness shine through. She is flawed, brilliant, and deeply human — an artist who used words like lanterns, lighting her way through prejudice and misunderstanding.
The Secret Agent (Kleber Mendonça Filho, Brasil, France, Netherlands, Germany, 2025) followed, this was the festival highlight for me. The plot unfolds like a flower being torn apart one petal at a time. Wagner Moura’s performance deserves Oscar contention. It’s storytelling at its most sacred: mysterious, slow-burning, revelatory.
Then came The Weed Eaters (Callum Devlin, New Zealand, 2025) — a micro-budget indie of wild imagination. It may not have been my style, but I admired its raw ambition. In its rough edges, I saw a pure spark of creativity — that reckless faith artists need to make something out of almost nothing.
Day 7: Bearing Witness
The Balibo (Robert Connolly, Australia, 2009) retrospective, shown with its director and editor present, was both powerful and sobering. Based on the true story of the Balibo Five, it asks tough questions about journalism, justice, and whose stories are told. One journalist’s pursuit of truth becomes a mirror of our own selective empathy. Whose suffering do we choose to illuminate? Whose do we overlook?
My final session — the Australian Shorts at The Mercury — was the perfect ending to my festival week. 2 I want to highlight to finish. Rory Pearson’s Mates (Australia, 2025) began as an uncomfortable comedy but unfolded into something tender and a cry for help. Its depiction of male friendship show how easily men can drift apart, and how vital it is to look out for one another before silence becomes loss. William Jaka’s and Fraser Pemberton’s Faceless (Australia, 2025), by contrast, was haunting and contemplative. Whether it represents one character or three, the sense of disconnection is clear — a First Nations person lost in their own country, unseen and unheard. The absurd artistic section highlights the painful irony of what we prioritise versus what we ignore.
Epilogue: The Sacred Flicker of Light
Across this year’s Adelaide Film Festival, I saw that light reflected in many forms: truth, humour, grief, faith, absurdity, and hope. Each story, from the grand to the intimate, carried a spark of recognition. Together they remind me that cinema is about understanding. It is a flicker of light to be recognised, shine a light on who we are.