As usual, the Australian film industry will deliver plenty of tasty cinematic treats in 2026, spanning a wide variety of genres and styles. Here’s 10 films to look out for.
1. The Deb
Release date: in cinemas 15 January
Rebel Wilson makes her directorial debut and co-stars in this adaptation of Hannah Reilly and Megan Washington’s 2022 stage musical, praised by the Guardian’s Cassie Tongue as “a women-centred, lovingly local story with big laughs and big pop choruses”. The story centres on two characters: a big-hearted farm girl (Natalie Abbott) who pins all her hopes on shining during her school Deb (which makes me wonder whether she’s seen Carrie …) and her more pessimistic cousin (Charlotte MacInnes). The Deb premiered at the 2024 Toronto International film festival but has been delayed by legal dramas.
2. We Bury the Dead
Release date: in cinemas 5 February
In the latest from horror maestro Zak Hilditch – whose oeuvre includes the awesome These Final Hours – America has accidentally deployed a weapon of mass destruction off the coast of Australia (oops!) and it’s turned a large swathe of the population into zombies. Led by Daisy Ridley as an American woman who travels to Tasmania in search of her missing husband, and whose job is to collect corpses, the film has been generating good buzz since premiering at the 2025 South by Southwest festival. IndieWire’s Katie Rife, for instance, called it a “top-notch” work “with compelling performances, urgent pacing, and gorgeous cinematography”.
3. Jimpa
Release date: in cinemas 19 February
The latest drama from Adelaide-based auteur Sophie Hyde is her biggest production yet, with two excellent actors in the lead role: John Lithgow as Jim, a longtime gay rights activist, and Olivia Colman as his film-maker daughter, Hannah. But it’s still clearly a personal project, inspired by the death of Hyde’s father and starring her non-binary teenager (Aud Mason-Hyde) as Hannah’s non-binary teenager Frances. The story involves Hannah travelling with Frances from Adelaide to Amsterdam to reconnect with her father.
4. Tenzing
Release date: TBC
Jennifer Peedom has built a reputation on big-spirited, visually sumptuous documentaries that chart the majesty of the natural world and the intrepid souls who venture into it – Mountain, River and Sherpa among them. The latter touches on the story of Tenzing Norgay, who along with Edmund Hillary became the first person known to have reached the summit of Mount Everest. Norgay’s now the subject of Peedom’s first narrative feature: a biopic starring Genden Phuntsok in the titular role and Tom Hiddleston as Hillary.
5. Death of an Undertaker
Release date: TBC
Actor turned director Christian Byers’ feature debut is a darkly comic hybrid documentary set in a Sydney funeral parlor, where he shot the film piecemeal over eight years. Byers plays a fictionalised version of himself, Sparrow, a steadily unravelling employee tasked with the funeral trade’s rather esoteric duties, including the occasional exhumation. The film’s aesthetic is warped as all get-out, with a scratchy, surreal, banged-up visual palette that reminded me of the grimy VHS-esque look of Harmony Korine’s Trash Humpers.
6. Crowded House
Release date: TBC
I wasn’t a huge fan of Richard Lowenstein’s previous documentary, Mystify: Michael Hutchence, but I’ll watch anything from the veteran film-maker who has helmed many fine films including Ecco Homo, He Died with a Felafel in his Hand and the stone-cold classic Dogs in Space. No prizes for guessing which beloved rock band is the subject of his next doco.
7. Bear Country
Release date: TBC
Old mate Russell Crowe has not one, two, three but eight upcoming titles listed on his IMDB page. Among them is this US/Australia co-production (adapted from Thomas Perry’s 2010 novel, Strip) in which he plays a strip club owner who, after being robbed several times, reacts like many protagonists in grindhouse revenge movies, writing the thieves a sternly worded letter. Kidding: he of course takes matters into his own hands. Rusty and director Derrick Borte previously collaborated on Unhinged, which isn’t great but does feature a scarily good performance from Crowe.
8. Mockbuster
Release date: TBC
How do you launch a career as a “legit” film-maker by working for The Asylum, a production company known for pumping out dreadful bargain basement genre knockoffs? By making a film about the entire doomed experience! Adelaide director Andrew Firth captures the process in this amiably low-key and sometimes laugh-out-loud funny documentary, some of the jokes coming from The Asylum’s disarmingly self-aware staff. Says one: “We make shitty movies … we’re barely above porn.”
9. The Fox
Release date: TBC
The feature debut from Dario Russo, creator of the cult TV animation Danger 5, is a curious sounding comedy starring Jai Courtney as a hunter who takes relationship advice from a talking fox – as you do – after his fiancée cheats on him. The synopsis from the Adelaide film festival, where it premiered in October, tells us to expect “talking magpies, magic holes, and lots of yapping Jack Russells”.
10. The Debt
Release date: TBC
Indigenous Australian horror movies are still in very short supply, 2024’s The Moogai and Tracey Moffatt’s pioneering 1993 film Bedevil being among the genre’s only entrants. So this scary movie, led by South Australian First Nations film-makers, is particularly welcome. At this point not much is known about the plot; the official synopsis tells us that “Anna and her 10-year-old ward become trapped in a terrifying ordeal” in which she must “make a choice: end her life or the life of the child”.
