As Perth’s balmy summer nights return, Perth Festival 2026 Lotterywest Films program brings together a collection of electrifying stories and award-winning visions from around the world — with French co-productions once again at the creative forefront. From a hallucinatory desert journey scored to throbbing techno, to a tense reconstruction of real-life tragedy that reverberated across global headlines, the program spans the mystical, the political and the profoundly human. Audiences will encounter chilling echoes of history, tender reflections on our bond with nature, and the kind of cinematic artistry that lingers long after the screen fades to black – proof that Perth Festival’s open-air showcase remains one of the most evocative ways to travel the world through film.
Director Oliver Laxe
Countries: France, Spain
Languages: Spanish; French; English; Arabic
Winner of the Cannes Jury Prize, this cinematic shockwave will cause a stir everywhere it screens. Energised by a propulsive techno soundtrack composed by Kangding Ray (winner of the Cannes Soundtrack Prize), Sirât explores existence, loss and grief in ways that will leave you breathless.
Inspired by the Sirāt Bridge, which in Islamic tradition separates hell from heaven where the soul is confronted with its true nature, the film tells the story of Luis, a father who embarks on a journey with his son to search for his eldest daughter, Marina, after she disappears deep into the rave communities of the Moroccan desert. On their travels they encounter a diverse group of revellers escaping the harshness of the world in favour of the freedom they find in each other and in the hypnotism of the music. What follows is wild, unpredictable, dizzying and utterly visceral.
Director Kaouther Ben Hania
Countries: Tunisia, France
Language: Arabic
Oscar-nominated director Kaouther Ben Hania blends actual recordings and scripted performances to tell the devastating true story of Hind Rajab, a Palestinian girl trapped in a car under Israeli military fire, and the first responders who tried to save her.
On January 29, 2024, Red Crescent volunteers in Gaza received a desperate call from a family trapped in a car under Israeli military fire. Moments later, only six-year-old Hind Rajab remained on the line, begging to be rescued. As paramedics had been killed in the area days earlier, the Red Crescent was forced to navigate a maze of military and governmental approvals before a rescue attempt could even be considered. Hind stayed on the call, scared and alone, as dispatchers tried to help. What follows is a compelling and tense, single-location drama, where the dispatchers juggle protocol, panic and moral urgency, trying to comfort Hind while negotiating an impossible reality.
Director Sergei Loznitsa
Countries: France, Germany, Netherlands, Latvia, Romania, Lithuania
Languages: Russian, Ukranian
When a prosecutor investigates allegations made a Stalinist prison inmate, the pursuit of justice becomes a dangerous journey into the heart of a system devouring its own. Ukrainian director Sergei Loznitsa’s bitingly topical, darkly absurdist legal drama was the highest scored film on the Screen International 2025 Cannes Jury Grid.
Soviet Union, 1937. Thousands of letters from detainees falsely accused by the regime are burned in a prison cell. Against all odds, one of them reaches its destination, landing upon the desk of the newly appointed local prosecutor, Alexander Kornev. With naïve determination and an enthusiasm for justice, Kornyev sets out to meet the letter’s author – a man who has suffered torture at the hands of the secret police. It is a meeting with staggering repercussions. Told with black humour and plenty of heart Two Prosecutors is a terrifying snapshot of an era of extreme oppression and paranoia that speaks clearly to the present.
Director: Ildikó Enyedi
Countries: Germany, Hungary, France
Languages: German, English
A tender, enchanting and wholly engrossing exploration of the natural world from Oscar-nominated director Ildikó Enyedi. In the heart of a botanical garden in a German university town stands a majestic ginkgo tree, a silent witness observing three human lives over the course of a century.
In 1908 steadfast Grete (Luna Wedler) is seeking admission to the botany department of a prestigious institution. Though whip-smart, her gender is a barrier to entry into the male-dominated field and to society at large. In 1972, at the same institution, Gundula (Marlene Burow) is conducting an experiment on what plants can sense via a single geranium. She elicits the help of her anti-social classmate Hannes (Enzo Brumm), with whom there is unspoken sexual tension. In 2020 Professor Tony Wong (Tony Leung Chiu-Wai), a brilliant neurologist working at the same institution, suspects a deep relationship between what is seen and unseen. Determined to make a connection, he seeks the supervision of world-renowned botanist Dr. Alice Sauvage (Léa Seydoux) to test his radical theory.
Over the span of the century, the incredible link between these humans goes unnoticed except by the tree, to which they are all spiritually connected, reminding us of the vitality and resilience of the natural world around us.
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KEY INFO FOR PERTH FESTIVAL 2026 LOTTERYWEST FILMS
WHAT: Perth Festival 2026 Lotterywest Films
WHEN: Until 29 March 2026
WHERE: Somerville Auditorium, The University of Western Australia, 35 Stirling Hwy, Godroo / Crawley WA 6009
HOW: You can purchase tickets via the links above.
HOW MUCH: $24 per person
For more events with links to France and the Francophonie happening in Australia this month, check out our What’s on in January 2026
