Sydney Film Festival: From Together to Mastermind, the top selections for 2025 program

It’s the time of the year again where the winter cold drives cinephiles into the warm embrace of the State Theatre to sit in the dark and collectively share in a great story.

The Sydney Film Festival will soon be on across the city in venues that extend beyond the grand State Theatre. The program was released this week and while you can find many gems, we reckon these are the top picks for this year.

THE MASTERMIND

American indie director Kelly Reichardt is beloved by tastemakers and for her latest film, she’s ensembled an amazing cast including Josh O’Connor, Alana Haim, Bill Camp, Hope Davis and John Magaro, who was in her 2019 movie First Cow.

The Mastermind, which will be competing for the prestigious Palme d’Or in Cannes next week, is a 1970s-set art heist caper in which O’Connor’s character starts casing the joint during a family visit to a Massachusetts art museum.

IT WAS JUST AN ACCIDENT

A co-production between Iran, France and Luxembourg, It Was Just An Accident comes from Jafar Panahi, a renowned filmmaker associated with the Iranian New Wave who continues to ply his craft despite coming up against the authoritarian regime in his country, including his 2010 arrest for supposed anti-government propaganda.

The story is centred on a family whose car is damaged by a small bump in the road. This seemingly insignificant incident triggers a series of events with huge consequences.

THE LOVE THAT REMAINS

Iceland filmmaker Hlynur Palmason’s two most recent features both featured characters tested by their circumstances (in A White, White Day, it was grief, in Godland, it was faith). Palmason is interested in the emotional resilience of his subjects.

In The Love That Remains, it’s a couple going through a marriage separation as they traverse the year-long process with their three children (played by Palmason’s real-life kids).

BLUE MOON

There have been a glut of musical biopics in recent years but you just know that if Richard Linklater is reuniting with his Before trilogy collaborator Ethan Hawke, it’s going to be different.

For one, it’s set in 1943 on the opening night of Oklahoma! on Broadway and follows famed lyricist Lorenz Hart (The Lady is a Tramp, My Funny Valentine) as he grapples with his professional and personal slump while his former creative partner Richard Rodgers is about to be feted.

WENT UP THE HILL

An Australian and New Zealand co-production, Went Up the Hill’s filmmaker, Samuel Van Grinsven, previously won the Sydney Film Festival’s audience prize with his debut feature, Sequin in a Blue Room. It’s a festival homecoming for this young Kiwi artist.

The psychological drama stars Vicky Krieps and Dacre Montgomery and is centred on a man returning to New Zealand for the funeral of his birth mother and tries to reconnect with his mum’s widow.

ROMERIA

Spanish filmmaker Carla Simon previously won the Golden Bear at Berlin with her film Alcarras, and here she once again mines inspiration from her own life experiences for Romeria.

The movie is about a young woman who travels to the hometown of the grandparents she had never met and discovers a host of relatives, and the secret of her dead parents’ love story.

TOGETHER

A co-production between Australia and the US, Together premiered in January at the Sundance Film Festival and has been selected as Sydney Film Festival’s opening night. It is Australian director Michael Shanks’s (no, not the actor from Stargate SG-1) feature debut.

The supernatural horror stars real-life couple Alison Brie and Dave Franco as Tim and Millie, who have moved to the countryside, leaving behind their city life. There’s a creepy neighbour (Damon Herriman), some bumps in the night and then a strange encounter in a cave that brings them closer “together”. Sounds ominous.

SORRY, BABY

Another breakout hit from Sundance, this indie film also won its writer and director Eva Victor the screenwriting gong at the American festival.

It stars Victor alongside a cast that includes Naomi Ackie, Lucas Hedges and John Carroll Lynch in drama-comedy that tracks five years of a young English professor’s life before and after a sexual assault.

TWINLESS

Described as a “queer bromance” black comedy, Twinless was a big hit at Sundance and won the audience award at the festival.

It’s about two young men (writer-director James Sweeney and actor Dylan O’Brien) who strike up an unusual friendship after meeting at a support group for twins who no longer have their womb buddy.

VIE PRIVEE

Did you know Jodie Foster can speak fluent French? The American star is the lead of Vie Privee, a murder mystery from Rebecca Zlotowski, a well-regarded filmmaker famed for her movies Grand Central and Other People’s Children.

Foster plays psychiatrist Lilian who becomes when she discovers a patient (French star Virginie Efira) has died. Lilian is convinced her patient was murdered and she reckons the husband (Mathieu Amalric) did it.

STATE OF STATELESSNESS

State of Statelessness is an anthology film made up of four stories about Tibetans who live in exile, disconnected from their homeland.

With an ensemble of directors (Tenzing Sonam, Ritu Sarin, Tsering Tashi Gyalthang, Sonam Tsetan and Tenzin Tsetan Choklay), the tales explore yearning, loss and homecomings and how to reconcile with your national identity and the traditions of your culture when you’re in limbo.