The 72nd Sydney Film Festival brings body horror, Richard Linklater and dragons to the table

• Sydney Film Festival 2025: the country’s best names in cinema will come to the Harbour City for 11 days in June.
• The full lineup has been released today and its 72nd edition looks set to be one of the best yet.
• From Blue Moon to a live-action remake of How to Train Your Dragon there’s something for all ages and tastes.

Sydney comes alive with some of the country’s best arts and culture festivals throughout autumn. There’s Vivid Sydney, Sydney Writers’ Festival and, returning for 11 days in June, is Sydney Film Festival. The citywide celebration of cinema takes place at venues all across the Harbour City, as cinephiles admire the best Australian releases on the big screen.

We’ve been treated to a few program announcements, such as that 14-hour documentary, Exergue – on documenta 14, and the Opening Night film, Together, but now we know the full lineup—and it looks set to be one of the biggest, and most varied years yet.

READ MORE: A 14-hour documentary is coming to Sydney Film Festival 2025

What to expect at Sydney Film Festival 2025

More than 145 films have been announced ahead of pre-sale opening later this morning.

Richard Linklater and Ethan Hawke have reunited for their ninth collaboration, following their work on the Before Trilogy and their critically-acclaimed 2014 film Boyhood. Their latest creation, Blue Moon, follows a Broadway lyricist as he confronts his fading career on opening night of the musical Oklahoma! It stars some of cinema’s hottest talents: The Substance‘s Margaret Qualley and All Of Us Strangers actor Andrew Scott.

Slanted, meanwhile, continues the film industry’s growing fascination with body horror. Director Amy Wang worked as a writer on the upcoming Crazy Rich Asians sequel, but her first feature-length directorial work goes in a very different direction. A Chinese-American teen undergoes a full racial transformation to become white in this satirical body horror, exploring questions of modern beauty standards and assimilation.

Fans of Jacob Elordi, Daisy Edgar-Jones or Will Poulter should make sure to see On Swift Horses. Daniel Minahan’s movie adaptation of Shannin Pugahl’s acclaimed debut novel sees two queer protagonists navigate forbidden love, personal freedom and social expectation in 1950s America.

Sophie Sommerville’s film, Fwends, premiered at Berlin International Film Festival earlier this year. She explores themes of friendship, urban life and the transition into adulthood, describing “how being in your 20s means staring into a dark, deep, meaningless void”. Hard relate. Two old friends, Jessie and Em, reconnect over a weekend in Melbourne and navigate both the city streets as well as personal revelations.

Scott Mcgehee and David Siegel’s The Friend, which had its premier at last year’s Telluride Film Festival, is another easy pick for future-favourite. Adapted from Sigrid Nunez’s bestselling novel, following a solitary writer who forms an unexpected bond with her late friend’s Great Dane after his suicide, the film stars Naomi Watts, Bill Murray and Constance Wu.

The beauty of SFF is that much of the program is curated into strains to better guide and speak to different interests. The family program, for example, is headlined this year by the new How to Train your Dragon, while the LGBTQIA+ program features Dag Johan Haugerud’s Love, the second entry in the director’s highly acclaimed trilogy on contemporary relationships, following last year’s Sex.

With tickets on sale today, it’s looking like Sydney Film Festival is in for another successful year highlight engaging storytelling with a bigger focus on Australian-made films and plenty of award-winners from other film festivals like Sundance and Telluride.

The full program can now be found at the Sydney Film Festival website.

Everything you need to know about today’s pre-sale

An exclusive pre-sale opens at 9am today, Wednesday, May 7, and is the best way to guarantee your seat at this year’s biggest film screenings.

Flexipasses are available, granting you access to free preview screenings year-round as well as enabling you to book up to four tickets per session—perfect for sharing with friends and family.

If you buy a flexipass before 11:59pm tonight (Wednesday, May 7), you’ll also go in the draw to win a trip to Europe. Cannes, anyone?