The Palestinian Film Festival Australia is back for its 13th year this May, bringing a bold selection of new cinema that captures the Palestinian experience with unflinching honesty and artistic daring.
The Palestinian Film Festival Australia is back for its 13th year this May, bringing a bold selection of new cinema that captures the Palestinian experience with unflinching honesty and artistic daring.
Running across five Australian cities from May 1 to 11, the festival program features groundbreaking features, documentaries and shorts that offer both raw representations of conflict and luminous celebrations of Palestinian culture, resilience and humanity.
Palestinian Film Festival
- Sydney: May 1-4, Dendy Newtown
- Perth: May 2-4, Luna Leederville
- Melbourne: May 8-11, Cinema Nova Carlton
- Brisbane: May 9-11, Dendy Coorparoo
- Canberra: May 9-11, Dendy Canberra
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“This year’s program is guided by a deep emotional pulse,” says Festival Director Naser Shakhtour. “It’s about the power of Palestinian cinema to speak from the rubble, to conjure memory and to imagine freedom.”
The 2025 program represents a diverse cross-section of contemporary Palestinian filmmaking, from established auteurs to emerging voices working under the most challenging conditions imaginable.
Feature highlights include The Teacher, the emotionally charged drama from Oscar-nominated filmmaker Farah Nabulsi that premiered at TIFF to critical acclaim. The Cannes-selected To A Land Unknown follows two Palestinian mates stranded in Athens and driven to desperate measures, while Passing Dreams takes audiences on a lyrical road trip through the West Bank with 12-year-old Sami and his search for a missing bird.
For the politically switched-on, the darkly funny feminist drama Thanks for Banking With Us (Sydney and Melbourne only) follows two sisters fighting for their inheritance against patriarchal laws, while the award-winning short Upshot delivers a tightly scripted drama about buried secrets on a remote farm.
The documentary lineup is equally heavy-hitting. From Ground Zero compiles 22 short works by displaced Palestinian artists creating under bombardment, while Gazan Tales offers intimate portraits of four blokes navigating daily life in Gaza before the recent war.
Film nerds won’t want to miss A Fidai Film, which investigates the 1982 looting of Palestinian archives in Beirut and confronts the Israeli institutions still holding them. Through recovered footage and radical re-editing, director Kamal Aljafari reclaims what was stolen.
For something completely different, Yalla Parkour (Melbourne and Perth only) tracks the relationship between a filmmaker and a parkour athlete in Gaza, blending nostalgia, memory and survival into a visually stunning portrait of youth culture.
The Palestinian Film Festival has spent over a decade creating a vital space for creative expression, offering punters a cinematic journey that celebrates the richness of Palestinian life and storytelling. In a moment where Palestinians face unprecedented challenges, the festival offers a vision rooted in humanity, resilience and cultural connection.
Tickets for all sessions are on sale now. For screening dates and updates, head here.
