Adelaide Film Festival

Adelaide Film Festival and OzAsia present stories that explore the diversity of Asian Cinema.

Seven films are highlighted here. All are acclaimed award winners and come direct from leading festivals including Cannes, Sundance and Jogjakarta. Whether a comedy, romance, road movie, epic drama or fantasy, at their heart, they explore the impact of injustices on ordinary lives.  

A Useful Ghost

• 2025, Thailand, Singapore, Germany, France 
• Thai with English subtitles 
• 130 mins, Unclassified 18+ 
• Director: Ratchapoom Boonbunchachoke 

Love, death, grief, and memory are explored in this highly original absurdist romantic drama filled with charming visual wackiness. March is intimately happy with his dead wife, Nat, now haunting their vacuum cleaner. Soon, she is called upon to remove other ghosts. Ladyboy Academic buys a vacuum cleaner that soon operates spontaneously. When his call for a replacement brings a hunky repairman to his door, he uncovers a tale of a ghostly vacuum haunting a family-owned business. Meanwhile, the family’s grieving son, March, is intimately happy with a vacuum containing his dead pregnant wife, Nat’s ghost. With so many spectral shenanigans underway, Nat becomes a much-needed exorcist. Soon a government minister is asking her to remove ghosts haunting old colleagues. In a country with a history of violent political repression, this is no easy request, even for a useful ghost. 

"Contemporary Southeast Asian cinema is made even richer and stranger by the addition of Ratchapoom Boonbunchachoke’s directorial debut." The Guardian 

Festivals: Cannes, Melbourne 

Awards: Grand Prize, Critics Week, Cannes 

All That's Left Of You

• 2025, Germany, Cyprus, Palestine, Jordan, Greece, Qatar, Saudi Arabia 
• Arabic and English with English subtitles 
• 145 mins, Unclassified 15+ 
• Director: Cherien Dabis 

In this heartbreakingly sad and epic family drama, underpinned by strong performances, the Palestinian experience from 1948 to recent times is distilled through a single family’s story of injustice, trauma and exile over three generations. When her son is caught up in occupied West Bank protests in 1988, a mother recounts the family history starting with the grandfather’s poignant attempt to hold onto the family’s Jaffa orange farm as the State of Israel is created. Inspired in part by the director’s family history. 

“Surprising, beautifully textured and deeply moving.” The Guardian 

Festivals: Sundance, Sydney 

Awards: Audience Awards – Sydney and San Francisco. 

Cactus Pears

• 2025, India, United Kingdom, Canada 
• Marathi with English subtitles 
• 112 mins, Unclassified 18+ 
• Director: Rohan Parashuram Kanawade 

A beautifully filmed romantic drama tenderly evoking rural Indian life, including mourning rituals. The director draws from semi-autobiographical elements to tell the story of queer love among lower caste farmers. After the death of his father, thirty-something Anand returns with his mother and some reluctance to his home village for the 10-day mourning period, where he faces questions on his unmarried state from his extended family. He escapes in the countryside with his childhood friend, local farmer, Balya, also resisting marriage. As passion flares between the two, Anand must decide on his return to the city whether this clandestine relationship has a chance. 

  ‘…takes on radiant form, with emotional complexities born out of characters walking around the truth, if only because euphemisms are the only language they have.’ Variety 

Festivals: Sundance, SXSW (London), Guadalajara 

Awards:  Grand Jury Prize World Cinema (Dramatic), Sundance; Winner Special Jury Award, San Francisco 

It Was Just An Accident 

• 2025, Iran, France, Luxembourg 
• Farsi with English subtitles 
• 102 mins, Unclassified 15+ 
• Director: Jafar Panahi 

Despite bans and imprisonment, Iranian master filmmaker Jafar Panahi continues to make great humanist films. Reimagining the road movie, he takes his audience on a thrilling emotional ride in a work full of twists and turns. When in the middle of the night a damaged car arrives at mechanic Vahim’s garage, a sound triggers his belief that the driver is the prison officer who tortured him. But as he was always blind-folded, can he really be sure? Turning to other local torture victims for confirmation, including a wedding photographer, he sets in motion a murderous revenge plot, but is this really who they are? Alternatively horrific and funny, it has an exceptional ensemble cast. 

"Subtly plotted like a good thriller, the movie slowly but surely builds into a stark condemnation of abusive power and its long-lasting effects." The Hollywood Reporter 

Film Festivals: Sydney, Melbourne, New Zealand 

Awards: Palme d’Or, Cannes 

The President's Cake 

• 2025, United States, Iraq, Qatar 
• Arabic and English with English subtitles 
• 103 mins, Unclassified 15+ 
• Director: Hasan Hadi 

In 1990s Iraq, all citizens are expected to celebrate President Saddam Hussein’s birthday amid widespread poverty and food shortages. Despite her prayers, nine-year-old Lamia wins the ballot to bake a cake for her school’s celebrations and must venture from her marshland home to the big city to secure the precious ingredients. Soon, her life as she knows it depends on the success of her baking mission. The first Iraqi film selected for Cannes. 

“A true gem and a real discovery.” Deadline 

Festivals: Cannes, Sydney 

Awards, Directors’ Fortnight Audience Award & Caméra d’Or for best first feature, Cannes 

Resurrection 

• 2025, China 
• Chinese with English subtitles 
• 160mins, Unclassified 18+ 
• Director: Bi Gan 

A tremendous tribute to the visual artistry and the imaginative potential of cinema by one of China’s most admired and innovative director Bi Gan (Long Day’s Journey into Night), known for his meditations on nostalgia and loss.  In this alt-reality epic fantasy starring the beloved Jackson Yee and acclaimed Shu Qi, humans can live indefinitely but no longer dream, burning up like candles when they do. But one dissident, the sacred monster, Fantasmer, can dream ecstatically and across time, entering as a low life (from vampire to crooked card sharp) into heightened worlds at different historic moments, ending in 1999 on the eve of the new century. 

“… (this) fascinating phantasmagoria is wild riddle about new China and an old universe.” The Guardian 

Festivals: Cannes 

Awards: Special Jury Prize, Cannes 

Yohanna 

• 2024, Indonesia, United Kingdom, Italy 
• Indonesian with English subtitles 
• 85 mins, Unclassified 15+ 
• Director: Razka Robby Ertanto 

In this thrilling work, beautifully captured by excellent cinematography, Catholic nun Yohanna frantically searches for the stolen truck she has borrowed to deliver humanitarian supplies to one of Indonesia’s poorest provinces, Sumba. Finding herself in a murky world of slave child labour, and desperate to help, she begins trading with her own morality, including engaging with local ancestorial rites. Award-winning Indonesian actress Laura Basuki brilliantly plays the titular, Yohanna and the young children’s performances are also terrific. This film with Italian Neorealist elements is imaginatively edited to capture the nuances of Yohanna’s ongoing conflicted world view. 

 ‘… a profoundly human film.’  Cineuropa 

Festivals: Rotterdam, Jogja-Netpac Asian Film Festival 

Awards: Indonesian Screen Awards (five including best picture, direction and performance)