PUBLISHED16 May 2025
Documentary Australia at Sydney Film Festival 2025
10 Australian documentary films compete for the Documentary Australia Award at the 2025 Sydney Film Festival.
Sydney Film Festival has announced its 10 finalists for the 2025 Documentary Australia Award for the Best Australian Documentary. Recognising the incredible artistry and tenacity of independent filmmakers, this prize acknowledges excellence in Australian documentary production.
This is our 12th year supporting the award and the third year of the increased prize of $20,000. The winner will be announced at the Festival’s Closing Night and will also be Academy Award eligible.
Documentary Australia Award Nominees
In a remote part of New Zealand’s South Island, “Harry” and his fellow underwater obsessives set out to dive deeper than anyone ever has before. Controversially, they plan to use hydrogen as a breathing gas – its explosive nature adding to the many hazards the close-knit team faces. As the 2019 Australian of the Year prepares to confront the dark waters and life-threatening cold, he questions the costs of his passion. In this SXSW-selected nailbiter, Peedom and co-director Alex Barry capture the tension, euphoria and mateship of this endeavour using Harris’s own vertigo-inducing cave footage, along with DOP Ben Dowie’s striking above-ground imagery and a compelling score by multi-award-winner Antony Partos.
Beyond music, Ellis’s passion project is a wildlife sanctuary in the forests of Sumatra: at “Ellis Park”, trafficked and mistreated animals are nursed back to health by a devoted team of carers led by indefatigable activist Femke den Haas. Returning a creature to the wild, Ellis brims with the same ardent candour as he does when jamming with his dad back in Ballarat. In telling his life story, from playing his first gig to forming The Dirty Three and beyond, he draws a bow between his hedonistic, addictive years, his redemption, and the sanctuary’s traumatised residents. Kurzel’s inspiring documentary, scored by Ellis, is an apt celebration of his talent and humility, and his commitment to the animal kingdom.
Focusing on several residents, director Jordan Giusti (Grevillea, SFF 2020) filmed over three years as a series of catastrophic floods tested community resilience. Lismore born and bred Eli loves his flood-prone town and recently purchased a home with a view down the creek. He’s a pragmatic guy: if flooding is predicted, he’ll just move the washing machine and stock up on beers. Eli’s friend Harper, tired of political complacency, turns to activism, while Carlie Atkinson, a Bundjalung-Yiman social worker, sets up a groundbreaking First Nations healing centre. With trauma bubbling up and talk of government buybacks dividing neighbours, locals must question whether they can find the strength and spirit to stay.
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A crowd-pleaser set in a picturesque Scottish village where contestants from around the globe have gathered for the annual World Porridge Making Championship. CPH:DOX 2025.
The sleepy Highlands community of Carrbridge, home to numerous amiable eccentrics, comes alive each year when the Porridge Committee begins their preparations. Then the contestants arrive, including reigning champ Lisa and seven-time finalist Nick, a health food aficionado, along with contenders from Canada, the Netherlands and Zimbabwe – and Australian newbie Toby (a taco chef!). The judges pick up their spoons… the oatmeal battle is on. Director Constantine Costi – also an acclaimed theatre librettist and director, most recently bedazzling audiences with Siegfried and Roy: The Unauthorised Opera – captures the charm and spunk of this Highlands competition with warmth, respect and lashings of humour.
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A captivating and cautionary portrait of one of Australia’s most controversial politicians, Joh Bjelke-Petersen, whose career can be seen as a playbook for the Trump era.
Premier Joh Bjelke-Petersen reigned over Queensland for 19 tumultuous years (1968–1987). Hugely popular, he presided over enormous growth – but corruption raged under his tenure, as did electoral manipulation and often violent suppression of dissent. Director (and Queenslander) Kriv Stenders (The Correspondent) tells Joh’s story through rare archival footage and revelatory interviews, exploring a life shaped by a hard yakka, god-fearing upbringing on his family’s farm. Trump’s spectre is evoked in Joh’s famously mangled and meandering way of speaking – brilliantly dramatised by Richard Roxburgh – alongside his unyielding execution of power and the desperate denial of his final days in office.
A powerful record of grief, community and ceremony in which the renowned Indigenous actor is laid to rest on his Homeland of Gupulul in Arnhem Land, NT.
A Yolŋu man, David Gulpilil lived a traditional life in the Arafura Swamp before being cast at age 16 in his first film, Walkabout, in 1971. He became an industry trailblazer, always navigating two worlds – although his Yolŋu culture was rarely in the spotlight. Before his death in 2021, Gulpilil’s family promised to lay him to rest at his birthplace of Gulpulul, and guide his spirit back to a sacred waterhole known as Marawuyu. This would prove an epic journey involving planes, boats and helicopters, and months of waiting for the right seasonal conditions. It’s the remarkable final chapter of his incredible story, as narrated by Hugh Jackman and cultural storyteller Baker Boy and skilfully chronicled by co-directors Maggie Miles and Trisha Morton-Thomas.
Fifty years on, revisit the ripping high-seas yarn of 12 adventure-mad misfits who pursued a perilous attempt to sail the vast South Pacific Ocean on mere log rafts.
In 1973, 12 men gathered in Ecuador at the start of a seemingly impossible mission. At the helm was Captain Vital Aslar, a prophet-like leader with a Salvador Dali-inspired dream to cross the South Pacific – roughly 14,500 kilometres, non-stop. The largely inexperienced crew began by building their own vessels from trees they’d felled. Then they headed out into the blue: navigating by the sun and stars, they encounter myriad creatures, tempests and doldrums as they make their way from Ecuador towards Australia. Award-winning documentarian Chadden Hunter blends original 16mm footage with stories from the surviving rafters, vividly conjuring a dreamlike adventure in which each voyager is pushed to their limits.
Beyond just learning how to sing and play the ukulele, these 10 women are writing their own songs – in preparation for a prison community performance with the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra. The Songbird program, helmed by First Nations singer-songwriter Nancy Bates, is designed to boost confidence and self-worth – but it requires much of the participants, all of whom struggle with the impacts of trauma and addiction. Though the women open up a little more with every song, each rehearsal, laying bare one’s traumas can be overwhelming. Director Shalom Almond spent six months filming in the Adelaide Women’s Prison with unprecedented access, and the result is both shocking and uplifting.
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The Wolves Always Come At Night
As in Island of the Hungry Ghosts, Brady here crafts an inventive hybrid of documentary and fiction in telling the poignant story of Davaa and Zaya (credited as co-writers), their four children, and the numerous animals in their care. When their livelihood is destroyed in a fierce dust storm – supercharged due to climate change – the couple make the heartbreaking decision to leave the desert and their beloved animals, and move to the city. Brady, who lived in Mongolia in her twenties, deftly portrays the family’s turmoil in adjusting to settlement life and soul-destroying work, haunted by dreams of their herding past and ancestral homeland. A festival hit imbued with beauty and a deep, poignant sense of loss.
The breathtaking red landscape of Wittenoom in WA’s Pilbara region is scarred by millions of tons of toxic waste from asbestos mines that once operated there. With an exclusion zone of nearly 47,000 hectares, it’s the largest contaminated site in the Southern Hemisphere. It is also the ancestral country, or Yurlu, of Banjima Elder Parker. Director Yaara Bou Melhem (Unseen Skies, SFF 2021) documents Parker’s environmental and cultural activism, right up until his death in 2024 from mesothelioma, an aggressive form of cancer linked to asbestos exposure. From the campfire to his hospital bedside, Yurlu | Country follows Maitland’s battle for justice and the environment, and his unbreakable bond with Country.
Support this project through Documentary Australia.
Please note: Documentary Australia is a proud sponsor of the Documentary Australia Award but plays no role in selecting the films in the competition or judging the winner.