Lumiere Cinemas (Bardot)

Oscar-winning war chronicler Mstyslav Chernov embeds with a Ukrainian unit in their last-ditch effort to reclaim a village, in a nerve-shredding reckoning with the Russian invasion’s relentless toll.

A documentary tribute to one of the nation’s best loved songwriters, charting Don McGlashan’s storied career from arty punk upstart to one of the strongest voices in the national identity of Aotearoa.

This surreal anime from the mind of a young Mamoru Oshii (Ghost in the Shell), remains just as unique as it was in the 80s. Returning with a stunning 4K restoration that brings its dreamy visuals to stunning life.

A young, released offender struggles to regain his bearings in São Paulo, forging a tumultuous partnership in love and business with an older sex worker, in Marcelo Caetano’s raw, vital drama.

What would you do if you won the lottery? Charles answers the age-old question by inviting his favourite former folk duo to his remote island, where the estranged band members prove that some flames never die...

Framed with enchanting Fijian landscapes and carefully decorated with beautiful Fijian people and culture. A story about familiarity, growth, responsibility, love, respect and boxing… told in true Fiji style.

A washed-up songwriter drowns his sorrows as his former collaborator triumphantly opens Oklahoma! on Broadway. A career-peak performance by Ethan Hawke powers Richard Linklater’s theatrical drama.

In a future world where senior citizens are banished from society, a rebellious matriarch instead embarks on a fantastic Amazon adventure. Gabriel Mascaro’s film is an ode to life and freedom with no age restrictions.

Set amongst the rugged countryside of Western Ireland, Christopher Abbot (Poor Things) and Barry Keoghan (Saltburn) deliver standout performances in a thriller that is as shocking as the landscape is serene.

A diverse ensemble of creatives including Stephen King, Takashi Miike and Karyn Kusama illuminate the enduring cultural legacy of Tobe Hooper’s low-budget 1974 slasher The Texas Chain Saw Massacre.

Sara Shahverdi’s unique position as a councilwoman in rural Iran invites the audience to share her triumphs and setbacks as she uplifts young women and ruffles conservative feathers by advocating for gender equality.

A woman navigates the experience of motherhood as a deaf person in a hearing world in Eva Libertad’s crowd-pleasing, feel-good drama which collected the Panaroma Audience Award at Berlin this year.

Ahmet stumbles upon a forest rave at the edge of his local village, where he finds the escape he’s been desperately seeking in Georgi M. Unkovski’s loveable debut, the first ever Macedonian film to be awarded at Sundance.

A teenage girl recounts her crush for her teacher through the pages of a memoir. The winner of the Golden Bear 2025 is a lucid and tender chronicle of the unforgettable experience of first love.

If you're looking for the wildest film of the fest this year, look no further! Ebony and Ivory is here on a nugget slide to melt your brain with absurd humour that becomes so delirious that it turns into a nightmare.

A bracingly audacious political satire, Ari Aster’s modern-day Western utilises an A-list cast (Joaquin Phoenix, Emma Stone, Pedro Pascal, Austin Butler) to ruthlessly skewer the polarisation of post-pandemic America.

A woozy summer of youthful aimlessness morphs into a complex infatuation as a rebellious bourgeois French teen falls for an older Ukrainian bricklayer in this sun-drenched coming of age tale.

Coolly compelling and disturbingly plausible, Neo Sora's debut feature is a dystopian teen drama where surveillance, friendship, and political truth collide in near-future Tokyo.

John Woo's influential cops vs. gangsters gun-fu classic comes back to the big screen with a pristine 4K remaster making it a perfect time to revisit or discover one of the greatest action films of all time.

Class, religion, and gender intersect in Neeraj Ghaywan’s personal approach to life in Northern India. A life-long friendship is put to the test when a shared dream leads two best friends in different directions.

A film shoot sparks fear and anger when a holy book is desecrated in the name of art in this intense German thriller, fanning the flames of contemporary conflict into a taut and tangly blaze.

A masterpiece of cinematic invention and political bravery, Jafar Panahi’s rousing new film deservedly won the Cannes Palme d’Or and opens NZIFF 2025 on a powerful and inspiring note.

Plunging through the corridors of a surgical ward, this frantic Swiss drama charts the pulse-racing worklife of an overstretched, underappreciated nursing professional.

Set in a gay-laxy far, far away this crowd pleasing and proudly queer Aussie adult animation delights with its vivid, candy-coloured palette, kinky sense of humour and catchy, upbeat musical numbers.

Punk renegade Shayne Carter (Straitjacket Fits, Dimmer) takes us on an iconoclastic tour through a career of highs and lows from suburban Dunedin to the heights of international fame and back again.

This wacky and heartfelt comedy, from popular French standup Artus, follows two criminals on the lam who lay low at a summer camp for young adults with disabilities. A runaway hit at the French box office last year.

An exquisite mix of visual poetry and subtle eroticism that breathes new life into the coming-of-age genre – this stunning debut feature from Slovenia heralds a bold new young female voice in world cinema.

What is love? Through the stories of a straight woman and a gay man, Haugerud defies conventions with humor and compassion, in an eloquent and moving masterwork on human relations in the 21st century.

An intimate, rapturously-lensed exploration of a family struggling with a parental separation, Hlynur Pálmason’s mosaic of snapshots, dreams and memories finds gentle profundity in the slow march of time.

Writer Alex Russell, whose credits include small screen hits Beef and The Bear, graduates to the big screen with this darkly compelling thriller about a desperate wannabe who attaches himself to a singer on the rise.

In the wake of a traumatic incident, a young woman forms a surrogate mother-daughter relationship with her rescuer. As emotional walls come down, doubts arise: is there more to the care offered than simple kindness?

French auteur Alain Guiraudie continues his Hitchcockian streak with this slippery, eccentric story of a provincial French family in mourning and the chaos that arrives with the prodigal return of a disquieting family friend.

This thought-provoking documentary follows a “mistress dispeller” – a professional specialist in ending infidelity – and intimately interrogates marriage, loneliness and labour in contemporary China.

Ṣọpẹ́ Dìrísù gives a masterful performance as a stern but loving father that takes his children on an impromptu day trip to Lagos to recover a debt in the midst of a political upheaval.

An aspiring novelist finds inspiration gurgling down the drain when his unconventional muse, a tropical fish, goes missing in this darkly absurd romp through the mean-ish streets of Auckland’s inner suburbs.

This immersive portrait of the time John and Yoko spent living in Greenwich Village is a vivid time capsule of America in the early 70s. A time of extreme political polarisation which may seem uncannily familiar.

Raoul Peck, the acclaimed documentary chronicler of power in America, looks to George Orwell’s writing of 1984 as a prescient guide to our modern era of Trumpian rule and reality manipulation.

Mattias spends his days pretending to be someone else, offering companionship to strangers in need. Bernhard Wenger’s unsettling drama quietly dissects loneliness, identity and the cost of always performing.

This gripping Sundance documentary re-examines the rise and fall of mid-00s hidden camera show To Catch a Predator in a damning investigation into the murky ethics of true crime entertainment.

A young girl scrambles to prepare a high-stakes birthday cake for a dictator amidst the dangers and deprivations of the Gulf War in this irresistibly scrappy Caméra d'Or-winner from Iraq.

As a Gaza native, photojournalist Fatma Hassona documents aspects of the war in Palestine that foreign journalists cannot access. Her tenacious Palestinian voice will not be silenced in this poignant documentary.

Visionary director Bi Gan invites audiences to a journey through the ages of cinema. In a dazzling kaleidoscope of images, he keeps the flame of the undying love between cinema and audiences burning.

With unfettered access to Leni Reifenstahl’s personal archive, documentarian Andres Veiel delivers an extraordinarily discerning portrait of the infamous filmmaker that allows audiences to draw their own conclusions.

One of the standouts of Cannes 2025, Carla Simón’s personal exploration of the restlessness of a young woman without parents is a poignant example of the healing power of cinema.

Brazilian filmmaker Kleber Mendonça Filho painstakingly recreates the Recife of the 70s dictatorship years in this sprawling, colourful spy thriller like no other. Winner of Best Director and Best Actor at Cannes.

Returning from last year’s Festival to screen alongside the rest of his Sex Dreams Love trilogy, Dag Johan Haugerud’s comic drama takes a candid and refreshing look at modern gender roles.

David Cronenberg’s sardonic self-portrait of his own struggle with grief is couched within a chilly and unsettling story of a tech-savant and his morbid invention which brings bereavement into the app age.

A father, accompanied by his son, goes looking for his daughter who has disappeared from a rave in Morocco. When the duo crosses paths with a group of misfits, their trip over the Atlas Mountains gradually becomes a coming-of-age odyssey.

Irreverent humour and empathy in the eye of a storm are key to resilience in Eva Victor’s Sundance-celebrated debut, in which an abuse of power throws a lit student’s existence into disarray.

German cinema celebrated the arrival of a bold new auteur in Cannes, as Mascha Schilinski unveiled her ghostly epic of women in one house visited by catastrophe and its echoes over generations.

In a world where everyone has a camera in their pocket, the government has cameras on street corners and businesses have cameras in their lobbies, when can you be sure that you're not being recorded and who can you trust?

A progressive teacher brings new methods to a village in Burgos on the eve of the Spanish Civil War, whilst in present day Catalonia a woman searches for answers as to the whereabouts of her great-grandfather’s remains.

Frequently cited as the greatest horror film ever made, Tobe Hooper’s raw, deeply disturbing journey into a sweaty, grimy, all-too-real hell still has the power to shake you to your core.

Unprecedented insight into the curation of the Toi Tū Toi Ora: Contemporary Māori Art exhibition reveals the struggle for Māori artistic sovereignty within the structures of Aotearoa New Zealand’s cultural institutions.

A grieving brother finds an unlikely connection at a support group for siblings who have lost a twin, but his burgeoning bromance threatens to turn into something darker in this uncomfortably sharp-witted comedy.

Fresh from Cannes acclaim comes a gripping, mordantly absurd and meticulous study of the inverted logic of state terror from master chronicler of tyranny Sergei Loznitsa.

This gritty and empathetic portrait of addiction and the self-destruction that comes along with it is filled with pitch black humour. Frank Dillane puts on a masterclass as he takes his character to rock bottom.

Seven women reflect on the emotional cataclysm of World War II in Dame Gaylene Preston’s landmark contribution to the collective memory of Aotearoa, which has lost none of its raw power on its 30th anniversary.

Cannibalism, murder and betrayal are on the table in this riotous NZ horror comedy. Four holidaying friends come across a strain of weed that gives them the most extreme case of the munchies ever recorded.

Panic around a new digital Big Brother era underpins a clever, absurdist send-up of bourgeois hypocrisy, as a married couple are put on the spot by their daughter’s all-pervasive telepathy.

Sophie Henderson and Curtis Vowell draw on real-life experiences for this delightful and nuanced romantic dramedy throwing a welcome spotlight on the legendary theatre spaces of Tāmaki Makaurau.

The Dardenne brothers return with a deeply affecting drama exploring the lives of five teen mothers. Hopes and fears steer the young women towards bettering their lives for themselves and their children.