A showcase of the best Australian films in the world today.

AUDIENCE AWARDS:

Best Short Film: WELCOME BACK
Best Micro-Short Film: SWEET SORROW
Best Performances: THE ABSENCE OF EVERYTHING
Best Direction: THE COLISEUM
Best New Media FilM: DEADTALK
Best Documentary: RING A BELL
Best Animation: THE TREES HAVE EYES
Best Story: THE SECONDS
Best Cinematography: FINAL GIRLS
Best Sci-Fi Film: THE LAST MAN ON EARTH
Best Fantasy Film: ALMONG WOLVES
Best Horror Film: RAT TRAP
Best Supernatural Film: CARVE
Best Black & White FilM: THE HERMIT AND THE MAYFLY
Best Adventure Film: COOL BEAN
Best Comedy Film: LIKE FATHER, LIKE GUM
Best 3D Animation: HOT MESS
Best 1 Minute Film: PLANET TOAD
Best Hand Drawn Animation: CAT-TASTROPHE
Best Stop Motion Animation: A DIGNIFIED BURIAL
Best Drama Animation: FROZEN LAKE
Best Gore Animation: ADAH
Best Sci-Fi Animation: FADING MEMORY
Best Tragedy FilM: RECOIL
Best Sound & Music: AGHHH!!!
Best Experimental: MIND
Best Action Film: OUROBOROS
Best Voice & Sound: EYE CONTACT
Best Surrealist Story: BREAK POINTE
Best Poetry Film: A RIGHT TO PROTEST
Best Visual Design: JACOBS FIGHT

RAT TRAP, 12min.
Directed by Emilia Stevens
Rat Trap follows Sarah, who wakes after a drunken night out to find herself abducted and imprisoned in a grim, windowless dungeon, watched constantly through a security camera. Disoriented and terrified, she soon discovers she is not alone. Sharing the space with her is another captive, an eerily quiet and scarred man whose behaviour suggests he knows far more about their situation than he is willing to say. As the hours pass, fragments of a horrifying truth begin to emerge. The dungeon is governed by brutal rules, and survival is tied to a choice neither of them should have to make. With paranoia mounting and trust eroding, fear turns inward as much as outward, forcing Sarah to question the limits of morality under extreme pressure. Claustrophobic and relentless, Rat Trap explores power, guilt, and desperation, examining what happens when survival itself becomes a weapon.

https://www.instagram.com/rat_trap_film

WELCOME BACK, 10min.
Directed by Rubakrishnan N
WELCOME BACK follows SAM, a burned-out IT professional trapped in the suffocating rhythm of deadlines, expectations, and emotional distance from her mother. On a seemingly ordinary morning, as she rushes to work already weighed down by exhaustion and guilt, Sam enters an elevator that begins to malfunction—its numbers glitching, time freezing, and reality subtly warping.

AMONG WOLVES, 15min.
Directed by Tobias Rasmussen
Two survivors struggle for their lives in a barren, hostile world, hunted by a past they thought they had left behind.

https://www.instagram.com/tobiasrfilms

THE LAST MAN ON EARTH, 29min.
Directed by Noah Gant
On the eve of his extraction from a desolate Earth, a mute engineer comes to blows with his A.I. companion as the pair begin to uncover a bizarre conspiracy about the delay.

https://www.instagram.com/thelastmanonearth_film/

THE SECONDS, 8min.
Directed by Hashani Wasana Senarathne
Rose, a passionate university student and talented painter, seeks refuge in her art amidst severe bullying and deepening depression. On the brink of despair, she attempts to end her life with medication. In her final moments, she embarks on a surreal journey through a dreamlike room filled with her artistic creations, where she momentarily reclaims hope. Despite her desperate effort to escape her fate and find a way to live, Rose’s struggle tragically culminates in her ultimate demise. “The Seconds” highlights the devastating impact of bullying and underscores the critical need for empathy and support.

https://www.instagram.com/thesecondsfilm/

FINAL GIRLS, 2min.
Directed by Ellena-Maria Kappos
“Final Girls” is a surreal, non-narrative film, drawing on French surrealism and horror imagery. I chose to self-cannibalise, repurposing footage from an archive of work produced during my degree at UCL, letting old projects collide and talk. The film grew from free association and dream logic. Scenes repeat, overlap, and resist explanation, without narrative resolution. While I bring personal meaning and emotion to the project, I want audiences to respond to what the images evoke for them. Their immediate kneejerk, instinctive reactions to what they see. Stories, often fictional films about women, shape who we are told to be. I wonder how much of myself is inherent, and how much is planted. The UFO (or UAP) functions as a surreal observer, ushering in the letterbox. Something foreign or not understood in myself.

https://www.instagram.com/kappos_/

CARVE, 5min.
Directed by Erin Dutton
Carve is supernatural horror tale about desperately making a last stand and trying to change your fate. It follows our protagonist Lucy, as she returns to familiar surroundings to pitch her skill and wits against a malevolent force intent on reclaiming a debt it is owed.

https://instagram.com/jude_dop

The Hermit and the Mayfly, 8min.
Directed by Charlie M.M Gibson, Finn Hills, Jack Mitchell
The Hermit follows a man living alone in a woodland cabin over the course of a single day, quietly observing his daily routines as he wakes, works, and tends to the land around him. What begins as a calm portrait of solitude slowly shifts in tone, as repetition and ritual start to feel deliberate and unsettling. Told without dialogue, the film relies on image, light, and texture to explore isolation, repetition, and the quiet unease hidden within habitual life.

https://instagram.com/charlie.gibson7

COOL BEAN, 1min.
Directed by Furter Holman, Thomas Howe
Watch as the beantastic stuntsman- er, stuntsbean, Buster Bean performs some death-defying stunts while holding two very alive and very insured eggs above his head!

HOT MESS, 3min.
Directed by Tortor Smith
Hot Mess offers an insight into ADHD in a compact and creative way, highlighting the damage and anxiety that can be caused by a well-meaning, but ultimately toxic, parent.

https://instagram.com/animatortor

PLANET TOAD, 1min., UK
Directed by Magdalena Metrycka
Roaming through the cosmic sky, a star-devouring Planet Toad grows bigger and brighter, until her appetite reaches a breaking point and reshapes the night.

https://www.instagram.com/planet_toad

A DIGNIFIED BURIAL, 2min.
Directed by Daisy Patnell
Two rats debate the ethics of taxidermy.

FROZEN LAKE, 2min.
Directed by Mohammed Shariq Puthen Peediakkal
Frozen Lake follows a young man, burdened by past trauma and anxiety, who slips into a surreal journey through his memories while ice skating with his partner. Drawn beneath the ice, he confronts haunting visions of his younger self—trapped, yearning, and broken—forcing him to face the pain he has carried for years. Though supported by his partner, he realizes that healing requires inner reckoning. Blending visual surrealism with emotional intimacy, the film portrays the fragile but hopeful steps of confronting the past and learning to move forward.

ADAHI, 4min.
Directed by Melike Üzüm
Miles and miles away from civilisation and the closest intelligent creature around having a vengeful spirit, what could go wrong?

https://www.instagram.com/viraakuu/

AGHHH!!!, 1min
Directed by Katie Wang
A woman who is terrified of the outside world soon realises that the biggest danger to her life is actually… herself.

https://www.instagram.com/aghhh.liaf

LIKE FATHER, LIKE GUM, 4min.
Directed by Aidan Harris
Like Father, Like Gum is a short comedy about a son who’s car troubles can only be fixed by his mechanically adept dad. Little does the father know, his son has already had a crack at the engine, using methods that will make any parent with mechanical sympathy cringe with horror.

https://instagram.com/likefatherlikegum

CAT-TASTROPHE, 1min.
Directed by MingHo Siu
When a giant alien CAT arrived, a SUPERHERO—forced from mid-rest and leave his house—had to confront it wearing just a TOWEL. Annoyed and impatient, he find a way—lured it away with his LASER VISION. But his aggravated aim was too strong, sending the cat crashing into the MOON with a massive explosion.

RECOIL, 5min.
Directed by Katia Lu
World War II, China. A young Chinese soldier on a chaotic battlefield is suddenly plunged into a psychological exploration of the visceral metamorphosis from child to soldier. Tranquil homes collide with the fire of their destruction; the warmth of family is shattered by the scream of falling bombs.

FADING MEMORY, 3min.
Directed by Yash Somnath Kunder
Fading Memory is a sci-fi animated short set in a future where nature has faded into myth. A grandfather captivates his grandson with the tale of a terrifying beast, only to reveal it was once a tiger, now extinct. The film explores themes of extinction and humanity’s growing disconnection from the natural world, suggesting that the creatures we know today could one day survive only in stories and imagination.

https://www.instagram.com/yashsk779/

MIND, 2min.
Directed by Cindy Sophie Solombrino
A Young girl travels down into the underground, where lack of caution may not be warranted…

OUROBOROS, 5min.
Directed by Aaron Joaquin
As a boy, he witnessed his father’s murder at the hands of a gun-wielding demon – trauma that ignited a burning desire for justice. As a man, he now struggles to walk the razor’s edge between justice and vengeance. In a neon-lit city’s dark criminal underbelly, his path of destruction begins to spiral out of control, with cash piling higher than the mountain of bodies left in his wake. But when the long-awaited confrontation arrives, the stakes shift — A snake lunges at its prey only to bite its own tail.

https://www.instagram.com/bcv.jimmy

The Trees Have Eyes, 6min.
Directed by Charlie Johnson
Among a mystical forest of ice and snow, a hunter reaps the consequences of what he sows.

https://www.instagram.com/thetreeshaveeyesfilm

Eye Contact, 4min.
Directed by Carmen Thomson
An autistic woman starts a new job where her neurotypical coworkers begin to act strangely. Seemingly everyone at the office is taking horrific measures to force their abnormal, ritualised, cult-like way of making eye contact, going so far as to turn into horrible eyeball monsters.

https://www.instagram.com/carmens_art_world

BREAK POINTE, 1min.,
Directed by Fanny Capu
In a world where ballerinas are objectified and abused by men, their bodies are molded into art while enduring exploitation. Set against the harsh sounds of machinery and gunfire, they struggle to reclaim their dignity amidst the violence.

THE ABSENCE OF EVERYTHING, 12min.
Directed by Gabriel Michael Sideras
In the stillness of a confession box, a suicidal young man opens up to a priest. As their conversation unfolds, the lines between faith, guilt, and responsibility begin to blur. The Absence of Everything is an intimate, minimalist short about silence, and the importance of human life.

https://www.instagram.com/gabrielmsideras

THE COLISEUM, 14min.
Directed by Swanoop A Soman

DEADTALK, 5min.
Directed by Florence Winter-Hill
A woman hijacks her Grandma’s funeral in order to get people to listen to her TedTalk

RING A BELL, 15min.
Directed by Ravi Ranjan
Jon has devoted his life to battling landfills, reducing carbon footprints, and combating greenhouse gases. He champions healthy lifestyles and re-mobilizes substance abusers, prisoners, and asylum seekers with the help of a German invention known as the Velocipede, or more commonly, the bicycle. Does that ring a bell?

https://www.instagram.com/docus_films/

A RIGHT TO PROTEST, 3min.
Directed by Lee Hanley
An archival footage based documentary about the presence and impact of protests throughout American history.

JACOBS FIGHT, 11min.
Directed by Nico Rowden-Coley
Jacob, a disciplined and determined fighter, steps into a pivotal fight, but the battle extends far beyond the ring. Haunted by personal struggles, he wrestles with connections to his aging and crude father, Arthur, his young and fiery daughter, Zara and his lost love Leah.

SWEET SORROW, 3min.
Directed by Parisa Zandbaf
In a super-short film shot on 16 mm, the poignant struggles of a romance unfold between a literature teacher and his enchanting alumnus, who must part ways as destiny leads them to different cities.