This is one of the most important films in this year’s festival. I would implore anyone wanting to learn more about Palestinian history to watch it. 

Factually, this film is about the stain that the 1948 Nakba left on its people. Symbolically, it’s about children who are trapped in a cycle of trauma that they will never outlive. It’s terrifying to think of the thousands of children who this story now belongs to, but it is important not to look away.

Driven by a powerhouse performance, Vanya is devilishly funny, playful, and inextricably human.

With its sweeping visual scope and grand approach to world building and action, Dune: Part Two is an absolutely monumental piece of sci-fi cinema. This is the kind of cinematic event that doesn't come around often, and I'd highly recommend checking it out in the biggest, loudest cinema possible.

Based on his 2017 short film of the same name, Alberto Corredor’s Baghead is a horror film about a young woman who inherits her father's pub, only to find out there's a supernatural entity in the basement with the ability to take on the form of dead loved ones.

Just two bros sitting around a campfire. Five feet apart. Because they can’t face reality. 

I had quite a good time watching Madame Web. It's just the right blend of bad and confusing filmmaking, never quite finding a happy medium between corporate meddling and the naïve misguidedness of a first time director.

Beginning with Lillian (Talia Ryder) embarking on a class trip to Washington DC, before a Pizzagate-like violent outburst from a young man […] interrupts her night, sending her down an almost literal rabbithole.

Everyone always asks who is Argylle, but they never ask how is Argylle? Kind of disappointing, if I'm being honest.

World cinema can bring us a film like this: a tiny love story, from a country you may never visit, dressed up like an anti-capitalist screed.

Force of Nature is an engrossing modern murder mystery regardless of whether you grew up in Victoria or not, and it does too many difficult things well to be dismissed

Painting a portrait of a marriage in decline, a child irrevocably changed, and a woman in freefall, Anatomy vivisects the ripple effect of its victim’s demise, familial wounds spilling open to reveal grisly entrails for all to see.

Sean Durkin’s The Iron Claw superbly avoids the pratfalls of biopic cliché and transforms the story of the Von Erich clan into a harrowing denunciation of toxic patriarchal masculinity masquerading as familial dynasty.

The Holdovers provides us with an inarguable Christmas Movie – despite its quintessentially-too-late Australian release date – that feels ready to be an instant classic.

Liberating in all the right ways, Poor Things is a heartwarming oddball of a film, matching the gorgeous with the grotesque, showing that even in life's most dire circumstances there is still so much joy to be found.

High octane thrills, chills and an (un)healthy dosage of familial anguish – Michael Mann’s Ferrari is an exhilarating portrait of a man whose complexity is shaped by a past scarred by immense grief.

Anyone But You is a modern-day adaptation of Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing, with none of the charm of an adaptation like 10 Things I Hate About You (1999).

Migration is not trying to elevate the road trip comedy or be innovative for animation. Its goal is to entertain families and make kids smile. Movies need to do that more.

Insightful, fiendishly hysterical, and (albeit slightly overwhelmingly) emblematic, Dream Scenario is a surrealist delirium that moulds one of 2023’s most inventive premises into a deeply moving, melancholic parable on the perks and perils of sudden celebrity.

Poignant and beautiful, The Boy and the Heron is both an interesting shift in theme and an excellent addition to Miyazaki’s extensive canon.