The 2026 Russell Hobbs British Film Festival is bringing 36 films to cinemas across the country from 28 October
Get the popcorn ready: the 2026 Russell Hobbs British Film Festival is bringing 36 films to Australian cinemas this October.
The 2026 Russell Hobbs British Film Festival runs from 28 October to 6 December, taking over Palace cinemas in eight cities.
The program features 36 films, including five anniversary screenings of older titles, and Russell Hobbs is back on board as naming partner.
The 2026 Russell Hobbs British Film Festival
- Melbourne: 28 October to 29 November, The Astor Theatre, Palace Balwyn, Palace Brighton Bay, Palace Cinema Como, Palace Westgarth, Palace Penny Lane, The Kino, Pentridge Cinema, Palace Church St
- Sydney: 28 October to 29 November, Palace Norton Street, Palace Moore Park, Palace Central
- Canberra: 28 October to 29 November, Palace Electric Cinemas
- Adelaide: 28 October to 29 November, Palace Nova Eastend Cinemas, Palace Nova Prospect Cinemas
- Ballarat: 28 October to 29 November, Palace Regent Ballarat
- Byron Bay: 28 October to 29 November, Palace Byron Bay, Ballina Fair Cinemas
- Brisbane: 29 October to 29 November, Palace Barracks, Palace James Street
- Perth: 5 November to 6 December, Palace Raine Square, Luna on SX, Leederville and Windsor Cinema
Stay up to date with what’s happening in and around Melbourne here.
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Opening night is My Duchess, directed by Mike Newell, with Joan Collins as Wallis Simpson and Isabella Rossellini as her lawyer, Suzanne Blum.
Closing night is the Australian premiere of Elsinore, directed by Simon Stone, with Andrew Scott playing actor Ian Charleson during his final stage role in a National Theatre production of Hamlet.
Prima Facie, adapted from Suzie Miller’s play, stars Cynthia Erivo as a barrister facing the justice system she once defended, and screens in centrepiece sessions exclusive to the festival.
Dramas and thrillers
Mike Leigh’s Tender Loving Care took out Best Film and Best Screenplay at the San Sebastian International Film Festival, and looks at ageing, family and change.
Queen at Sea stars Juliette Binoche and Tom Courtenay as a family grappling with their mother’s dementia, and picked up the Jury Prize at the 2026 Berlin International Film Festival.
Danny Boyle’s Ink traces the early days of The Sun under Rupert Murdoch and Larry Lamb, with Jack O’Connell, Guy Pearce and Claire Foy.
Anton Corbijn directs A Talent for Murder, with Helen Mirren as Patricia Highsmith in an imagined showdown with a literary agent, based on Joanna Murray-Smith’s play Switzerland.
Andrew Garfield leads The Uprising as a labourer who sparks a peasants’ revolt in 14th century England, while Andrew Haigh’s A Long Winter adapts Colm Tóibín’s novel.
Bill Nighy stars in 500 Miles, which follows two boys travelling across Ireland to reach their estranged grandfather, and Judy Davis plays a swimming champion planning a trip to Switzerland for assisted dying in Butterfly Stroke.
Comedies and romances
Olivia Colman and Alexander Skarsgård star in Wicker, a raunchy fable about a fisherwoman and the husband she wishes for.
Saoirse Ronan plays a teacher in Bad Apples whose terrible decision ends up changing her classroom. Richard E.
Grant and Claire Foy play social climbers in Savage House, set in 18th century England and built around one very ambitious dinner party.
Domhnall Gleeson features in The Incomer, about two siblings facing evacuation from their Scottish island home.
Mother’s Pride has Jonno Davies trying to save a family pub, and Once Upon a Time in a Cinema draws on David Gleeson’s childhood in a family of cinema owners.
James McAvoy makes his directorial debut with California Schemin’, where two Scottish MCs pose as a Californian rap duo to land a record deal.
Alan Cumming and Fionn Whitehead star in Borges and Me, set in 1970s Scotland. H
aley Bennett leads Virginia Woolf’s Night & Day in 1910 London, and Alice Englert stars in Molly Manners’ debut Extra Geography, set in an English girls’ boarding school.
Ciarán Hinds heads to Donegal to scatter his wife’s ashes in The Three Urns, Ian McKellen and Roger Allam walk their dogs across Hampstead Heath in Frank and Percy, Rhys Ifans and Laura Linney star in Onwards and Sideways, and Bella Ramsey headlines Sunny Dancer, set at a summer camp for teens with cancer.
True stories
Parky is a world premiere documentary on Michael Parkinson, with interview subjects including Muhammad Ali, Billy Connolly, Kylie Minogue, Bob Hawke and Madonna.
Hill follows Formula One champion Damon Hill through archival footage and interviews.
The Match revisits the 1986 World Cup clash between Argentina and England at Azteca Stadium, narrated by Gary Lineker and Jorge Valdano. Everybody to Kenmure Street, a winner of the Special Jury Award at Sundance, uses re-enactments featuring Emma Thompson to recount a 2021 immigration raid in Glasgow.
The Lost Children of Tuam dramatises the story of an amateur historian, played by Monica Dolan, who investigates a mother and baby home in Galway.
Family and anniversary screenings
Flavia is the one for the whole family: a 1950s mystery about an 11-year-old amateur sleuth investigating a murder at her old manor-house home, with Martin Freeman and Toby Jones in the cast.
The anniversary lineup includes Hamlet (30 years), Last Orders (25), The French Lieutenant’s Woman (45) and The Man Who Fell to Earth (50), which screens in a 4K restoration with David Bowie. Shirley Valentine also screens as a tribute to Pauline Collins.
The festival opens on 28 October in Sydney, Melbourne, Ballarat, Byron Bay, Canberra and Adelaide, then 29 October in Brisbane and 5 November in Perth. Tickets are on sale now.
For more information, head here.
This article was made in partnership with Palace Cinemas.
