Sydney Film Festival: Special Presentations 2026

The State Theatre sets the stage for Sydney Film Festival's biggest nights, with red carpet premieres, award-winning films and star-studded special events.

Star-led features include Dead Man's Wire, directed by Gus Van Sant and starring Bill Skarsgård, Dacre Montgomery and Al Pacino, recounting the infamous 1977 hostage standoff broadcast live across America; and Rays and Shadows, Xavier Giannoli's sweeping epic starring Oscar-winner Jean Dujardin as a press baron navigating Nazi-occupied France.

Direct from Cannes comes The Man I Love, Ira Sachs' romantic drama set in 1980s New York, starring Rami Malek, Tom Sturridge and Rebecca Hall;The Birthday Party, a taut thriller starring Hafsia Herzi and Monica Bellucci; Colony, from Train to Busan director Yeon Sang-ho, a propulsive zombie action film from Cannes Midnight; Silent Friend, winner of the Venice FIPRESCI Prize, starring Tony Leung Chiu-wai and Léa Seydoux in Ildikó Enyedi's (On Body and Soul, Sydney Film Prize 2017) story spanning a century through the life of a ginkgo tree; Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma, Jane Schoenbrun’s (I Saw the TV Glow, SFF 2024) stylish psychosexual horror, starring Hannah Einbinder and Gillian Anderson; and The Samurai and the Prisoner, Kiyoshi Kurosawa's (Cure, SFF 1998) majestic Cannes-selected samurai epic.

Australian voices feature strongly. Pressure, the much-anticipated latest from acclaimed Australian director Anthony Maras (Hotel Mumbai), stars Andrew Scott and Brendan Fraser in the true story of one meteorologist's impact on D-Day. Ian Darling's (The Final Quarter, SFF 2019) The Valley also has its World Premiere, a meditative portrait of life in Kangaroo Valley.

Major award winners also screen. Yellow Letters, the Berlinale Golden Bear winner, and Rose, which earned Sandra Hüller the Berlinale Silver Bear, both have their Australian premieres. Sundays, winner of Best Film at the San Sebastián Film Festival, follows a teenage girl whose decision to enter convent life unmasks the frailties of her family. Also screening are Knife: The Attempted Murder of Salman Rushdie, Oscar-winner Alex Gibney's (Taxi to the Dark Side, SFF 2008) captivating account of Rushdie's recovery after being stabbed 15 times; and Árru, a powerful Berlinale debut following a Sámi reindeer herder confronting a mining project threatening her ancestral lands.

Explore the full program via sff.org.au