Adelaide Film Festival


The Adelaide Film Festival is a film festival usually held for two weeks in mid-October in cinemas in Adelaide, South Australia. Originally presented biennially in March from 2003, since 2013 AFF has been held in October. Subject to funding, the festival has staged full or briefer events in alternating years; some form of event has taken place every year since 2015. From 2022 it takes place annually. It has a strong focus on local South Australian and Australian produced content, with the Adelaide Film Festival Investment Fund established to fund investment in Australian films.
Established in 2003 as Adelaide International Film Festival, it dropped "International" from its title after the inaugural edition, as it dropped its FIAPF membership the following year. It was, however, the first film festival in Australia to introduce an international competition, as well as being the first to fund film production directly.
The festival hosts a number of awards, including the Don Dunstan Awards ; Best Feature Fiction; Best Feature Documentary; Bettison & James Award; and others. In 2017 the International Virtual Reality Award was launched by AFF in partnership with the Australian Film, Television and Radio School, known as the AFTRS ADL Film Fest International VR Award.
The 2025 festival runs from 15–26 October.

History

Overview

An independently financed Adelaide International Film Festival had been held from 1959 to 1980. The idea of a new film festival to stimulate the local film industry and celebrate the 30th anniversary of the South Australian Film Corporation was raised by Premier Mike Rann in 2002, and a director and board were appointed. The Adelaide Film Festival Investment Fund was created to fund the Film Festival and other events.
The inaugural Adelaide Film Festival was held from 28 February to 3 March 2003. It ran a programme of screenings, special events and forums in a number of cinemas across Adelaide. It was the first film festival in Australia to introduce an international competition, and also the first to create an investment fund specifically for film production.
After its first edition, the festival ceased to use "International" in its title, denoting a withdrawal from FIAPF membership. It was known as the BigPond Adelaide Film Festival, or BAFF, for a period until 2011, as its main sponsor had been BigPond.
Since the first event in 2003, the Festival has been held in 2005, 2007, 2009, 2011, 2013, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, and a "pop-up" weekend festival in March 2019.
Audiences have grown year on year, with an audience of more than 64,000 people in 2018, and estimated to have had an impact of on the state's economy. The 2022 festival's audience and box office broke all previous records.
the festival had been held 11 times since, usually biennially but as an annual event from 2015 to 2018. In 2022 it was announced that the full festival would be presented each year, instead of biennially, after the Malinauskas government pledged annually for the following four years.
In May 2024, Adelaide Film Festival launched its "Adelaide Film Festival Goes to Cannes" program. It partnered with Cannes Film Festival's film market, the Marché du Film, to showcase five local projects in an official presentation, as well as taking a group of ten South Australian filmmakers to participate in a program of activities there. The film projects are Kangaroo Island, Lesbian Space Princess, Mockbuster, Iron Winter, and With or Without You. Ten filmmakers were selected for the group travelling to Cannes: Sandy Cameron, Ben Golotta, Timothy David, Kelly Schilling, Leela Varghese, Travis Akbar, Lisa Scott, Joshua Trevorrow, Matt Vesely, and Nara Wilson.

Locations

From 2017 to 2020, festival events took place mainly at the GU Filmhouse in Hindley Street, with some sessions at the smaller Mercury Cinema in Morphett Street.
In 2020, most screenings were hosted by Palace Nova at their Eastend and Prospect locations, with some showings at Mitcham Wallis Cinemas at Mitcham Square Shopping Centre, Odeon Star in Semaphore, Tandanya, the Warriparinga Wetlands, and at Alberton Oval. In 2022, for the first time, screenings also took place at the Capri Theatre in Goodwood, Her Majesty's Theatre, and Event Cinemas Marion, in addition to the two Palace Nova locations, Wallis Mitcham, and Odeon Semaphore. In 2024, screenings take place at the recently refurbished Piccadilly Cinema in North Adelaide, as well as the Palace Nova Eastend, Semaphore Odeon, and Mercury Cinema.

Festival directors

was the festival's founding director in 2002. She had previously co-founded the 1995 Sydney Fringe Festival, was the Special Events Producer for the Adelaide Festival of Arts, and the artistic director for the 2002 Adelaide Fringe. In 2007, Sedgwick introduced an international jury prize to the festival. At the time of her stepping down from the role of Festival director in 2013, Sedgwick said that the festival was the first in Australia to introduce an international competition, and a production fund, and that ticket sales had grown by 20 per cent each year.
2013 was Amanda Duthie's first year as festival director, after spending eight years at the Australian Broadcasting Corporation and eight years at the Special Broadcasting Service during the 1990s.
After running the festival's programming from 2015 to 2018, Mat Kesting was appointed as the new CEO and creative director in 2019. Kesting is originally from Adelaide, and went to Melbourne to study media and cinema studies. He had become more interested in film while at university, and from 1999 to 2009 ran a filmmaking competition and short-film festival called 15/15 Film Festival, which toured around Australia after an opening event in Melbourne that sold out a large venue. He was program manager at the Brisbane International Film Festival from 2006 until 2008; programmed six editions of the "On Screen" strand of OzAsia Festival in Adelaide; and was exhibition manager at the Mercury Cinema. In 2019 he was named at Cannes as one of Screen International's Future Leaders. he remains the director of Adelaide Film Festival.

Patrons and board

In 2024 filmmaker Sophie Hyde took on the role of patron, after well-known film critics Margaret Pomeranz and David Stratton retired from their ten years of service to the festival.
The board of the Adelaide Film Festival as of 2024 consists of:
  • Chair Anton Andreacchio, producer and entrepreneur, board member of the South Australian Film Corporation and Entrepreneurship Advisory Board
  • Beck Cole, prominent Aboriginal screenwriter and director of drama and documentaries
  • Hugo Weaving, actor
  • Joshua Fanning, company director and entrepreneur; founder of CityMag, group creative director for KWP!
  • Marianna Panopoulos, a certified practising accountant and a graduate of the Australian Institute of Company Directors
  • Rick Davies, engineer, lawyer and filmmaker
  • Jessica Gallagher, University of Adelaide's inaugural Deputy Vice-Chancellor
  • Sheila Jayadev, producer, co-founder of Emerald Productions

    Recognition

In 2007, the AFF featured in Variety Magazine's Top 50 unmissable film festivals around the world, saying: "Of the planet’s 1,000-plus film fests, only a select few pack industry impact. A few dozen more, by virtue of vision, originality, striking setting, audience zest and/or their ability to mine a unique niche, also rank as must-attends".
The Adelaide Film Festival's 2020 event was awarded "Best Festival" at the 2021 South Australian Ruby Awards, an annual ceremony which recognises outstanding achievement in South Australia’s arts and culture sector.

Jury awards

Don Dunstan Award

The Don Dunstan Award was established in honour of Don Dunstan, Premier of South Australia through most of the 1970s, and is presented in recognition of an outstanding contribution to the Australian film industry by an individual.
Past recipients have included:
ADL Film Fest was the first Australian film festival to create a juried prize for best feature film.
Winners have included:
  • 2006 Still Life
  • 2009 Treeless Mountain
  • 2011 Incendies
  • 2013 Jîn
  • 2015 Neon Bull
  • 2017 I Am Not a Witch
  • 2019 The Seen and Unseen
  • 2020 Beginning
  • 2022 Autobiography
  • 2023 Empty Nets
  • 2024 In the Belly of a Tiger
  • 2025: Vanilla ; Special Mention to ''Reedland''

    Feature Documentary Award

The Feature Documentary Award, also known as the Flinders University International Documentary Award, was first awarded in 2013, with the inaugural prize going to Blush of Fruit, directed by Jakeb Anhvu. Since then it has been won by:
  • 2015 Speed Sisters
  • 2017 Taste of Cement
  • 2018 Island of the Hungry Ghosts
  • 2020 Firestarter – The Story of Bangarra
  • 2022 The Hamlet Syndrome
  • 2023 Hollywoodgate
  • 2024 Simon and Marianne
  • 2025: She ; Special Mention to ''Sanatorium''