The Sydney Film Festival is always one of the most exciting events on the calendar. Running from 3–14 June 2026, this year’s program offers a compelling lineup filled with bold Australian premieres, standout international titles fresh from Cannes, and compelling new voices. Below is my personal selection of the seven films I’m most looking forward to watching during the festival.

Direct from Cannes Midnight comes Colony, director Yeong Sang-ho latest horror movie that promises to reignite the zombie movie just like his highly acclaimed Train to Busan did in 2016.

Colony stars Jun Ji-hyun as Se-jeong, a professor attending a biotech conference in a multi-purpose building when a disgruntled former employee Suh Young-cheol (Koo Kyo-hwan) unleashes a potent virus that rapidly transforms the infected into zombies. A ragtag group of the uninfected band together and try to stave off the growing horde of zombies, while on the outside authorities seal off the entire facility.  

 

The Sydney Film Festival closing film, Paper Tiger stars Adam Driver, Scarlett Johansson and Miles Teller in James Gray’s Cannes-selected crime thriller set in 1980s New York.

Paper Tiger tells the story of Irwin Pearl (Teller), a hard-working engineer, devoted husband to Hester (Johansson) and father to two boys. When his much flashier older brother Gary (Driver), an ex-cop who has gone into the private sector, comes to him with a proposition to invest in a lucrative urban regeneration project that involves the Russian mob, the lure of easy money proves too attractive. But when Irwin witnesses the Russian gangsters doing something illicit, it sets off a devastating series of events.

Returning to the world of Russian gangsters that Gray explored in his 1994 debut Little Odessa, Paper Tiger proves to be a riveting thriller that serves as both a portrait of a complex family and of a country undergoing a radical change in its value system.

 

Based on the true account of a 1977 hostage standoff, the Gus Van Sant directed Deadman’s Wire is a thrilling crime drama that delves into social and economic issues that are even more relevant and corrosive today.

Bill Skarsgård stars as Tony Kiritsis, an Indiana property developer who in February of 1977 tired a shotgun trigger wire around the neck of mortgage broker Richard Hall (Dacre Montgomery). Claiming to have been betrayed in a land deal, Kiritsis holds Hall hostage in his grungy apartment while a media circus formed outside.

Skarsgård delivers an electrifying performance as the suddenly famous little guy who feels his American dream has been stolen by morally bankrupt elites, while Al Pacino brings the spirit of his hostage thriller classic Dog Day Afternoon with him in a memorable role as Hall’s calculating father.

 

Award-winning documentary Mockbuster hilariously chronicles an Australian filmmakers struggle to fulfil his dreams through the notorious profit-driven production house The Asylum.

Mockbuster follows filmmaker Anthony Frith who in a last-ditch attempt to direct a feature film contacts the legendary trash movie house The Asylum, creators of notorious mockbusters (blockbuster knockoffs) such as Sharknado and Transmorphers. A meeting with executives in Los Angeles results in Anthony given just six days to shoot a lost world dinosaur film in suburban Adelaide on a shoestring budget.

Frith documents the chaotic process, his bewildered cast, and his own creeping self-doubt throughout Mockbuster, as he chases his dream through the rollercoaster hustle that is low-budget genre filmmaking.

 

The legend of Robin Hood is given the A24 treatment with The Death of Robin Hood a suitably dark and brutal affair directed by Michael Sarnoski (Pig.)

Hugh Jackman delivers a grizzly version of the iconic character who is first introduced in shocking scenes of violence when he enters a battle in which the odds are very much against him and he does not expect to survive. When he does, Robin ends up in a remote abbey in the care of a kindly nun (Jodie Comer), where he strikes up something of a friendship with a leper (Murray Bartlett), and takes on the role of protective father figure to an orphaned young girl.

A radical interpretation of a classic story that deals with themes of violence, regret and salvation, The Death of Robin Hood is sure to hit its target.

 

Scream queen Jessica Rothe stars in the mind-bending sci-fi horror Imposters, a missing persons thriller that segues into a mesmerising puzzle box about primal fear and desire.

With a rocky marriage and an infant son who’s vanished without a trace, desperate mother Marie (Rothe) is led to a hidden cave near her small-town home and emerges with young Theo safe in her arms. Husband Paul (Charlie Barnett), however, suspects something isn’t right.

Caleb Phillips’ widely praised feature debut takes off in highly imaginative, unpredictable and suspenseful directions, with early reviews stating Imposters is in one of those rare films that initially seems familiar until you realise you’ve never seen anything quite like it before.

 

The English-language debut from acclaimed director Cristian Mungiu (4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days), Fjord is a thought-provoking drama that won the covered Palme d’Or at the 2026 Cannes Film Festival.

Fjord stars Sebastian Stand and Renate Reinsve as Mihai and Lisbet Gheorghius (respectively), a devoutly Christian couple and parents of five children who relocate from Romania to a Norwegian village set in a fjord to be closer to Lisbet's family. When eldest daughter Elia (Vanessa Ceban) turns up at school with some bruises on her body, it triggers an investigation into her parents and their conservative parenting methods, soon escalating into a full-blown crisis in the village and far beyond.

Based on true a true story, Fjord poses searing moral questions that challenges the audience to contemplate the limits of secular contemporary societies in dealing with minorities and asking resonant ethical questions.