Adelaide Film Festival 2025 kicks off tomorrow night and runs for the following 11 days. Discover films from France and beyond, including the 2025 Palme d’Or winner, a love letter to cinema, a director’s love letter to his daughter, a search for a missing daughter and sister in Morocco’s epic outdoor rave party circuit, and deceased loved ones returning as appliances, to name but a few. Read on to discover the films and a special discount code for some of the French films in the Adelaide Film Festival 2025 program.
ADELAIDE FILM FESTIVAL 2025 FILMS THAT ARE SOLELY IN FRENCH
Maya, Give Me a Title (Maya, donne-moi un titre)
Country: France
Language: French
Director: Michel Gondry
SCREENINGS: Wed 22 Oct 11:45am Eastend Cinema 01 & Fri 24 Oct 10:15am Odeon Cinema 01 & Sat 25 Oct 2:00pm Capri Theatre
SPECIAL DISCOUNT FOR MM READERS: Receive a 10% discount on your tickets when you use the discount Code AFF25FRANCAISE10 when booking at adelaidefilmfestival.org or via the App.
Michel Gondry’s love letter to his daughter – laugh, dream, imagine. Michel Gondry rocks! He wrote and directed Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, makes the coolest videos, and has the cutest daughter. But Maya and her dad live in different countries. So he phones her every evening, and asks “Maya, give me a title”. Based on her answer, he creates low-tech animations: Maya in the sea with a bottle of ketchup, Maya the policewoman and the three cats. Gondry believes that imagination is your most important asset. Join Maya on fantastic voyages that will have the little ones dreaming, and the grown-ups smiling. In this riotous anime, sudden love between a mermaid princess and an engineer spirals into slapstick bedlam.
MULTILINGUAL FILMS WHERE FRENCH IS ONE OF THE LANGUAGES
Countries: United States, France
Languages: English, French
Director: Richard Linklater
SCREENINGS: Thu 16 Oct 6:30pm Eastend Cinema 01 & Sat 25 Oct 5:45pm Eastend Cinema 01
SPECIAL DISCOUNT FOR MM READERS: Receive a 10% discount on your tickets when you use the discount Code AFF25FRANCAISE10 when booking at adelaidefilmfestival.org or via the App.
A girl, a gun, a movie. The film that changed the face of cinema.
Paris, 1959. Cinephiles eagerly grasp the chance to turn themselves into directors. No film in this movement would have the impact of Jean-Luc Godard’s A bout de souffle (Breathless). The rules are simple – throw away everything you think you know about cinema, and reinvent it by shooting on the streets, making it up as you go along, substituting the dead hand of a staid professionalism with enthusiasm and aphorisms. All this is packed into Richard Linklater’s irrepressible love letter to a moment in film history where suddenly anything seemed possible.
COUNTRIES: France, Spain
Languages: Spanish, French
DIRECTOR: Oliver Laxe
SCREENINGS: Fri 17 Oct 6:30pm Eastend Cinema 01 & Sat 25 Oct 12:45pm Eastend Cinema 01
A father and teenage son follow Morocco’s epic outdoor rave party circuit, chasing a missing daughter across the desert’s unforgiving path. Thumping bass shakes the mountain air as a father and his teenage son hurl themselves into Morocco’s epic outdoor rave party circuit, desperate to find the daughter and sister who has been missing for far too long. Each party is a lead, each beat a gamble, pulling them deeper into the desert’s vastness where joy and danger trade places without warning. Sweeping visuals capture ridges, dust and an unbroken horizon, while a score shifts from pounding techno to spectral drift. Sirât is a hypnotic road movie and a brutal rite of passage, where survival is never certain
SPECIAL EVENT: FRIDAY NIGHT PARTY 17/10:
Celebrating cinema that pushes the artform is what we love doing at AFF. We also love bringing people together for parties and fun times and this year is no exception as we dance following the premiere of the mind-blowing Sirât, which stole the show in Cannes this year. Drinks, canapes and beats included. Friday 17 October ‘Pink Carpet’ from 6:00pm Premiere: 6:30pm, Palace Nova Eastend Cinemas Party: Cinema Place, Adelaide Film & Party: $69/$59 plus booking fee
MULTINATIONAL PRODUCTIONS THAT AREN’T IN FRENCH AT ADELAIDE FILM FESTIVAL 2025
Countries: Thailand, France, Singapore, Germany
Language: Thai
Director: Ratchapoom Boonbunchachoke
SCREENINGS: SUN 19 OCT 6:00PM EASTEND CINEMA 01 & WED 22 OCT 8:45PM PICCADILLY CINEMA 01
The ghost of a young Thai woman returns to her grieving husband, taking the form of a bright red vacuum cleaner. After Academic Ladyboy (Wisarut Homhuan) buys a vacuum cleaner to combat dust pollution, he discovers it is haunted. Handsome repairman Krong (Wanlop Rungkumjad) arrives at his door, relaying tales of ghosts at a local appliance factory. So begins Thai writer/director Ratchapoom Boonbunchachoke’s politically tinged, multi-layered comedy/drama, in which the ghost of a young woman, Nat (Thai superstar, Davika Hoorne), returns to care for her ill and grieving husband, March (Wisarut Himmarat). Taking the form of a bright-red vacuum cleaner, Nat is determined to prove herself a loving ghost, despite the objections of March’s family.
Countries: Sweden, France, Denmark
Language: Arabic
Director: Tarik Saleh
SCREENINGS: Sun 19 Oct 4:15pm Mercury Cinema & Thu 23 Oct 8:00pm Eastend Cinema 04
A pharaoh among jackals. George Fahmy (played by Fares Fares) is the greatest star of Egyptian cinema, known as ‘The Pharoah of the Screen’. This gets you money and fame, but it has its drawbacks, such as being forced into making government propaganda, or trying to preserve your anonymity when buying Viagra. Flying with the political eagles quickly leads Fahmy into a spiral of intrigue and betrayal. Swedish-Egyptian director Tarik Saleh brilliantly skewers the military-based government, completing his ‘Cairo Trilogy’ (the second part of which, The Boy from Heaven, screened at AFF 2022), exploring the complex political structures of contemporary Egypt.
Countries: Iran, France, Luxembourg
Language: Farsi
Director: Jafar Panahi
SCREENINGS: Sun 19 Oct 4:15pm Capri Theatre & Sun 26 Oct 3:15pm Eastend Cinema 01
Winner of the 2025 Palme d’Or. “A fierce, unambiguous denunciation of authoritarian regimes the world over.” (The New Yorker)
Despite bans and imprisonment, Iranian master filmmaker Jafar Panahi continues to make great humanist films. Reimagining the road movie, he takes his audience on a thrilling emotional ride. In the middle of the night a damaged car arrives at mechanic Vahid’s garage. He hears something that triggers him to believe that the driver of the car is the official who had tortured him. But as he never saw his face, can he really be sure? Turning to other victims for confirmation, he sets in motion a murderous revenge plot. But is this really who they are?
Countries: France, United States
Languages: English
Director: Raoul Peck
SCREENINGS: Sat 18 Oct 2:45pm Eastend Cinema 01 & Wed 22 Oct 4:00pm Eastend Cinema 01
2+2=5 and 2025=1984. Master documentarian Raoul Peck’s biographical study of George Orwell is a no-holds-barred assault on contemporary life. Peck is interested in Orwell, not as a writer who merely chronicled the past, but as a thinker who gives us vital insights into the creeping totalitarianism of the present. Narrated by Damian Lewis, Orwell: 2+2=5 contains clips of past fictions and contemporary material that is sadly real. Peck targets the demagoguery, the organised lying and the surveillance technologies that constitute the weapons wielded on us by the thought police of 2025.
Countries: China, United States, France
Language: Mandarin
Director: Bi Gan
SCREENINGS: Sat 18 Oct 8:00pm & Thu 23 Oct 8:00pm Picadilly Cinema 01
In a dystopian world devoid of dreams, a woman enters an android’s consciousness to undergo the ultimate search for truth. In a world devoid of dreams, a woman (Shu Qi) wakes after brain surgery in a dystopian near future. As she recounts the history of China to an android (Jackson Yee), they live out several past lives together through a confluence of dream and memory, passing through five cinematic eras that reshape their shared experience. Bi Gan’s century-spanning, genre-defying fantasmagoria is both an ode to cinematic forms and a mind-bending odyssey through recent Chinese history. As the Android begins to understand the present truth, their emotional bond makes it difficult for the woman to leave and explore the daunting world that exists just beyond the frame.
She
Countries: Italy, France
Language: Vietnamese.
Director: Parsifal Reparato
SCREENINGS: Sun 19 Oct 12:00pm Mercury cinema & Fri 24 Oct 11:00am Eastend Cinema 01
A searing and moving study on globalisation’s impact on the collective lives of Vietnamese women factory workers, living away from their families. Any decent person has to be interested in the conditions under which their smartphone is produced, right? So, you need to see this film. She tells the story of the Vietnamese women who work at one of the world’s largest electronics factories. Women are preferred for this work – 80% of the 80,000 strong workforce in the factory is female. They do twelve-hour shifts under gruelling conditions. Their primary contact with their children is through video calls. Italian anthropologist Parsifal Reparato has made a film that questions the very structure of the global economy.
Countries: Brazil, France, Germany
Language: Portuguese
Director: Kleber Mendonça Filho
SCREENINGS: Sat 18 Oct 5:15pm & Thu 23 Oct 3:00pm
A brilliant Brazilian political thriller blends surreal invention with the ruthless realities of 1970s dictatorship. A Cannes standout, The Secret Agent unfolds in 1977 at the volatile height of Brazil’s military dictatorship. Marcelo, an accidental dissident no longer safe in São Paulo, returns to Recife during Carnival week to reunite with his young son and escape. Instead, he finds a city steeped in surveillance, paranoia and corruption. Carnival’s riot of colour and music clashes with the shadowy corridors of power, as moments of surreal playfulness erupt against jarring brutality. This is a tense, slyly humorous portrait of life under a regime where joy and fear share the same streets.
Countries: France, Germany, Netherlands, Latvia, Romania, Lithuania
Languages: Russian, Ukrainian
Director: Sergei Loznitsa
“This is a meticulously constructed steel trap of a movie.” (The New Yorker)
At the height of the Stalinist terror, a young prosecutor starts to investigate allegations made by a prisoner. The pursuit of justice becomes a dangerous journey into the heart of a system devouring its own. The action moves at the rhythm of bureaucracy, but it is never less than engrossing. As with many works about the absurdity of bureaucrats, there is a sly humour at the ludicrous idea that what they are doing amounts to administration. But this never detracts from the insight that the tyranny is both banal and malevolent.
SHORT FILMS FROM FRANCE AND THE FRANCOPHONIE AT ADELAIDE FILM FESTIVAL 2025
Countries: Bulgaria, France
Director: Iva Tokmakchieva
A hot summer day brings several neighbours out on their balconies. During a sudden rainstorm, one of them gets a burst of inspiration.
Country: France
Director: Jocelyn Charles
During a train ride, Ariel and Paul pass the time sketching their deepest fears. Their game takes an unexpected turn when a mysterious passenger intrudes on their exchange.
KEY INFO FOR ADELAIDE FILM FESTIVAL 2025
WHAT: Adelaide Film Festival 2025
WHERE: Various cinemas across Adelaide
WHEN: 15-26 October 2025
HOW: Purchase your tickets via the links above or via the Adelaide Film Festival app
HOW MUCH: Individual ticket prices are as follows:
- Full Price $25
- Concession card holders $20
- Group 10+ $19
Don’t forge the code for 10% off the price of individual tickets for Maya, give me a title and Nouvelle Vague
FESTIVAL PASSES
If you’re planning to see a few or a lot of films, you may benefit from a festival pass which will give you a discount. Similarly, if you are going as a group, the film passes may be appealing to you.
The film passes pricing is as follows:
- 3 Film Pass: 3 standard screenings, 3 tickets per session: $59 Full Price, $49 Concession
- 5 Film Pass: 5 standard screenings, 5 tickets per session: $95 Full Price, $79 Concession
- 10 Film Pass: 10 standard screenings, 4 tickets per session. $175 Full Price, $145 Concession.
- Gold Pass: 1 ticket to all standard screenings, standby priority, and an official AFF lanyard. $299 Full Price, $255 Concession
- Platinum Pass: 1 ticket to all standard screenings and galas, select party and event invitations, standby priority, concierge booking service, and an official AFF lanyard. $599 Full Price, $525 Concession.
Adelaide Film Festival 2025 will also have $10 rush tickets for selected sessions. Keep an eye out for the daily deal here, their social media, and their newsletter each morning of the festival.
