Adelaide Film Festival rolls out big names and new voices in 2026 program
Olivia Colman’s wicker romance, Port Arthur conspiracy theories, a Scott Hicks classic, and the Hindmarsh Island controversy will hit the big screen in the newly unveiled Adelaide Film Festival program.
When Mat Kesting first met Olivia Colman, the Adelaide Film Festival CEO and Creative Director made her a bold offer:
“I said the Adelaide Film Festival would be quite happy to sponsor her if she wanted to move to Adelaide,” Kesting tells InReview.
The Oscar winning star of The Crown and The Favourite appeared in two local productions in last year’s program, from headliner Jimpa – which saw her travel to Adelaide to shoot with director Sophie Hyde – to voicing the titular animal in Dario Russo’s The Fox.
This year, Colman will appear once more in Wicker, the head-turning new film from Adelaide-born director Eleanor Wilson.
Wicker sees Colman play a lonely fisherwoman who commissions the village weaver (Peter Dinklage) to make her the perfect husband (played by Alexander Skarsgård). The film’s premise – and a trailer with enough creaking sound effects to keep any foley artist’s hands full – already stoked headlines when its first trailer dropped in July.
“She’s an incredible performer, and I think you’ll see that in this film,” Kesting says of the “raunchy romp in the woods”. “Particularly, her facial acting – she can relay so much with her face.”
Wicker is one of 122 films – including 10 world premieres and 27 Australian premieres – from 52 countries to appear in this year’s Adelaide Film Festival program, unveiled on Tuesday night. That includes a slew of films already feted on the international festival circuit, such as Pedro Almodóvar Bitter Christmas, award-winning French queer cartoon Jim Queen, Paweł Aleksander Pawlikowski’s Fatherland, Josef Kubota Wladyka’s Ha-Chan, Shake Your Booty!, and Ira Sach’s Rami Malek-starring The Man I Love.
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Kesting has selected Wild Horse Nine, a darkly comic spy thriller starring John Malkovich, Sam Rockwell and Steve Buscemi, as its opening night headliner. It’s the latest film from Martin McDonagh, the writer and director behind critically acclaimed character pieces The Banshees of Inisherin and Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri.
“The third act is next level,” Kesting says of the “quite irreverent” film, set in the lead-up to the 1973 Chilean coup. “Most films you can sort of anticipate where they’re going to go. This one it just keeps you guessing right to the end.”
While previous years have often placed a locally produced or festival-funded feature in the top spot, Kesting says Wild Horse Nine’s plum spot reflects the festival’s international focus.
“We’re mixing it up a little bit this year, and I think that this film will be a really satisfying opening night experience.”
The program will also air a string of new features supported by the Adelaide Film Festival Investment Fund, from Kuba Dorabialski’s Agata the Writer – which stars Mia Wasikowska as a novelist who travels to Sarajevo to research a new book set during the Bosnian War – to Georgina Savage and Matthew Bates’ documentary Hell Has No Fire Escape, which will close out the festival.
“It’s about this pastor, Ina Dry, who inherits a rehab clinic in outback South Africa,” Kesting says of Hell Has No Fire Escape. “Loneliness really becomes the focus of the film – she gets or drawn into a social media scam by a fake Jason Momoa. It really proves that documentary can be stranger than fiction.”
Another intriguing doco is Aftermath, which sees filmmaker Jared Nicholson explore the world of Port Arthur conspiracy theories.
“Jared set about to make this film about this woman who had claimed that Port Arthur was a hoax, and that she knew the truth and everyone needed to listen to her. But in that process, he got drawn into a really complex web of conspiracy theories.
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“It’s both a reflection on that incredibly tragic part of Australian history, but it’s also quite contemporary in how misinformation can be so problematic.”
Other local connections include Adelaide director Anthony Maras’ (Hotel Mumbai) new Andrew Scott and Brendan Fraser-starring war-and-meteorology drama Pressure, and Lucrum, the third film developed through the festival’s Film Lab: New Voices program. Following Monolith and Lesbian Space Princess, first time director Johanis Lyons-Reid and producer Lilla Berry filmed their low-budget horror flick entirely in the Adelaide Hills.
The festival also celebrates some familiar faces, from a 30th anniversary tribute to Scott Hicks’ international breakthrough Shine, to the locally-shot directorial debut of Adelaide actor Tilda Cobham-Hervey.
Sixteen years after she made her screen debut at the festival as the teenage star of Sophie Hyde’s 52 Tuesdays, Cobham-Hervey will pull double duty on either side of the camera opposite Jonathan Pryce in It’s All Going Very Well…
“I think she is one of the standout talents of her generation, and is still very much connected with Adelaide and an absolute delight to work with – and and she loves the Film Festival too,” Kesting says of Cobham-Hervey, who will also serve on this year’s festival jury.
While this “love letter to Adelaide” won’t be screened in October – scheduling changes have meant it will instead premiere next March as part of the 2027 Adelaide Festival – Kesting says it illustrates the festival’s long-term impact.
“It’s about seeing the next generation of filmmakers like Scott Hicks come through; we really try and prioritise directorial debuts and new voices in cinema.”
One of the most poignant inclusions in the program is the documentary KUMARANGK: Secret Women’s Business. Directed by Tracey Rigney, it revisits the controversies of the 1990s Hindmarsh Island bridge affair, while putting the Ngarrindjeri women who lived through it front and centre.
“I remember when that happened very well,” Kesting says of the 1990s controversy, which was also the subject of an art exhibition as part of this year’s Adelaide Festival.
“When the filmmakers brought the project to AFF, I jumped on it straight away. I think it’s an incredibly important story for South Australia to reckon with, and this time it’s told from the perspective of the women [who] were oftentimes really misrepresented through all of the litigation that occurred, and their traditions were disregarded and disrespected.
“I think they’re incredibly generous to share that with everyone through this film, and Adelaide Film Festival is super proud to be premiering KUMARANGK.”
Adelaide Film Festival runs from October 14-25. Explore the full program here.
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