by FilmInk Staff
TWICE THE PROGRAM SIZE, IN ALL NEW VENUES, PRICED ACCESSIBLY, WITH LIVE SCORES, FREE OUTDOOR SCREENINGS + A NEW INDUSTRY SYMPOSIUM
“We’re bringing the spirit of underground cinema to even more people this year. BUFF 2026 is bigger, stronger, and more accessible than ever.” – Felix Hubble, Festival Director
After a massively successful first year, bringing over 2,500 punters to Brunswick West, Brunswick Underground Film Festival (BUFF) is back, with its second edition launching this May in Melbourne.
From the minds behind cult cinema collective Static Vision, BUFF has become the city’s much-needed home for forward-thinking, transgressive and independent cinema. From Thursday 14 May – Sunday 17 May, BUFF returns to the heart of Brunswick with a program twice the size of its 2025 edition, with bold new cinema, and retrospective titles that celebrate the undeniable force of boundary-pushing filmmaking.
Expanding to four days and six screens at Balam Balam Place and Brunswick Picture House, BUFF will present 69 feature films and 36 short films. Feature premieres include Safdie-producer Oscar Boyson’s Our Hero, Balthazar, Katarina Zhu’s cam-girl drama Bunnylovr (featuring Rachel Sennott), and The Moment breakout star Hailey Benton Gates’ Sundance-winning Atropia.
Anniversary screenings feature a rare run of Ken Russell’s 1971 shocker The Devils, a full retrospective of revolutionary comic filmmaker Elaine May, and a 45th anniversary screening of Abel Ferrara’s infamous Ms .45. The festival also showcases new works from emerging independent filmmakers, such as Everything Grows In Eden from Australian filmmaker Jack Johnston and Annapurna Sriram’s SXSW award-winning F***toys (tickets to this BUFF session sold out in one day).
To further BUFF’s mission to keep cinema accessible for all, the festival is taking the unprecedented step of freezing the price of festival passes ($135 for access to 20+ sessions across the extended weekend), and dropping the price of a single ticket (from $17.50 to $15 general, $12.50 concession, with $10 tickets available for unwaged patrons).
Additionally, BUFF is doubling the size and length of its program and will also feature a choose-your-own-adventure Friday night of triple features, numerous free family-friendly
outdoor screenings (headlined by Stephen Chow’s Shaolin Soccer) and a free industry symposium aimed to upskill emerging critics, filmmakers and exhibitors.
This year’s program has a no clash rule between session blocks, and with both venues a short stroll from each other, it’s easier than ever for audience members to make a day of it and get the most out of their multifilm passes.
“Art and entertainment should be accessible to everyone. We significantly exceeded all of our best-case-scenario attendance goals last year, and now we’re keen to pay it forward to our community,” says Festival Director Felix Hubble.
There’s so much to enjoy at the festival. Please find a summary of festival highlights, dates, ticket pricing info, symposium info and our full program below.
Brunswick Underground Film Festival (BUFF)
Thursday 14 May – Sunday 17 May
Venues: Balam Balam Place, 15 Phoenix St, Brunswick
Brunswick Picture House, 510-512 Sydney Rd, Brunswick
Single Tickets / Special events Opening Night: The Devils (inc. drink on arrival from Co-Conspirators) – $20 Balam Balam Place: General – $15 / Concession – $12.50 / Unwaged/Flat Broke – $10 Brunswick Picture House: General – $20 / Concession – $17
Passes Full Festival Pass – $135 Five Film Pass – $65
About Static Vision Static Vision is an Australia-based film collective. Since 2018, they have been presenting important and rare international films across festivals and one-off screening events. Working to broaden the films on offer in Australia’s independent film exhibition landscape, recent theatrical releases include Sean Price Williams’ The Sweet East, Kristoffer Borgli’s dark-comedy Sick of Myself and inaugural MIFF Bright Horizons award-winner Neptune Frost.
For more program information and to purchase tickets, please visit our festival website: https://buff.film
Festival Headliners
The second annual BUFF Opening Night will screen Ken Russell’s massively controversial
The Devils (1971), to celebrate its 45th anniversary. Uncut and uncensored in its full (unholy) glory, this religious shocker gets to enjoy everlasting life as it’s shown on the big screen for fans and curious newcomers alike. Starring Vanessa Redgrave and Oliver Reed, this feverish fantasy, adapted from real historical events in 17th century France (and Aldous Huxley’s ensuing novel), pushes the boundaries of delirium with provocative religious imagery, setting the stage for a festival full of unfamiliar wonders.
John Cameron Mitchell’s iconic, pulsating explosion of identity, gender and sexual expression, Shortbus (2006), will be screened in glorious 4K for Closing Night of this iteration of BUFF. Even after 20 years, the film still breaks new ground with its achingly raw focus on its characters’ emancipation of identity and paths to self discovery. A unique nexus of art, music, politics and sex, building up to a very satisfying climax.
The latest chapter of a global trans phenomenon reaches local shores, as BUFF hosts the Australian Premiere of Castration Movie Anthology iii. Junior Ghosts – Premorphic Drift; a Fragmentary Passage (2026). The project has become a significant force in underground cinema’s trans new wave, a cinema verite series making history through its lengthy runtimes.
Action-packed Australian underground film 100% Pure Rage (2025) will have its Victorian premiere, following a sold-out run at SXSW Sydney. Shot for just $3000 by a team of university students in Brisbane, the film is a heart-racing, non-stop cavalcade of violence with ingenious, low-budget practical and digital effects, pushing the limits of what can be achieved within meagre means.
100 years after its initial release, cerebral Japanese silent drama A Page of Madness (1926) will be screened from a new restoration. Initially lost for 45-years of its lifespan, the cryptic masterpiece — filled with stunning dreamy visuals — will grace the screen accompanied by a new live score from Australia’s queen of noise, Uboa.
Elaine May Retrospective
Brunswick Picture House plays host to all four films directed by the much-loved Elaine May: a quadruple feature of big laughs, abrasive anti-heroes and shaggy ’70s style.
The comedy legend pairs up with Walter Matthau in screwball A New Leaf (1971); a hilarious honeymoon nightmare follows with The Heartbreak Kid (1972); next up is mob masterpiece Mikey and Nicky (1974), starring John Cassavetes and Peter Falk; and, finally, her infamous flop Ishtar (1987), whose modern reclamation proves that May’s undersung comic genius is still being discovered by new fans today.
Live Scores
This year, BUFF will lay host to multiple live music events, accompanying films celebrating their 100th anniversaries. Highlights include acclaimed dark ambient/drone artist Uboa, who will be making a rare live appearance, performing an all-new live score for once-lost Japanese asylum-set psychological horror film A Page of Madness (1926), as well as an early morning performance from slowcore musician Pat Johns, accompanying The Passaic Textile Strike (1926), a film made to raise funds for an ongoing workers’ action.
Saturday Sex/Sexuality Sessions
Across a libido-testing twelve-film marathon, BUFF’s Static Vision screen is set to get steamy. Giddy nudist flick Nude on the Moon (1961) acts as foreplay, before Catherine Breillat’s brilliant A Real Young Girl (1976) and À Ma Souer! (2001) capture the bleak, aching underside in coming-of-age.
Katharina Zhu’s daring debut Bunnylovr (2025) gives viewers an intimate peek into the life of a camgirl. The Lost Sex Films of King’s Cross: About Love (1973) shines a light on secret Sydney subcultures in the 1970s. Then, the party comes to an explosive end with three erotic works from 1971: Pink Narcissus, Boys in the Sand and Deadly Blows. Ripe with desire, beauty, danger and freedom, it’s a day of unforgettable and little-seen big screen pleasures — adults only, in case you hadn’t guessed.
Other Highlights
Straight from Sundance, where it won a Grand Jury Prize, former Vice reporter Hailey Benton Gates’ Luca Guadagnino-produced Atropia (2025) finds Alia Shawkat (Arrested Development) amongst a troupe of military role-players who help prepare soldiers for combat in Iraq: lust in the dust ensues. Ten years in the making, Corey Feldman vs. the World (2026) is an intimate and shocking behind the scenes documentary on the former child star’s ill-fated musical project, his crusade against Hollywood predators, and his ironic downfall when he is accused of abuse himself. BUFF mainstay/Canadian wunderkind Avalon Fast returns with her latest feature (co-directed by Jillian Frank), Drinking and Driving (2026), a gorgeous, moving mumblecore throwback charting the lives of aimless, dysfunctional twenty-somethings, premiering in Australia a mere month after its US debut at LA’s Festival of Movies.
With Hasan in Gaza (2026) follows acclaimed Palestinian documentary filmmaker Kamal Aljafari as he searches Gaza for an old cellmate who has almost certainly passed away. A follow-up to last year’s Lost Sex Films of King’s Cross session, About Love (1973) collects further artefacts from George and Charis Schwarz, two of Sydney’s most notorious socialites and some of Australia’s earliest sex film producers. Rounding out our program highlights are 45th anniversary screenings of two grindhouse favourites: Ms .45 (1981), Abel Ferrara’s genre-defining but rarely-screened revenge thriller, and Sam Raimi’s iconic The Evil Dead (1981), screening in its original aspect ratio with original mono soundtrack.
Feature Line-up (in alphabetical order)
100% Pure Rage (dir. Haruki Ryles, 2025)
A Ma Soeur! [Fat Girl] (dir. Catherine Breillat, 2021)
A New Leaf (dir. Elaine May, 1971)
A Page of Madness (dir. Teinosuke Kinugasa, 1926)
A Real Young Girl (dir. Catherine Breillat, 1976)
The Adventures of Prince Achmed (dir. Lotte Reiniger, 1926)
American Theater (dir. Nicholas Clark and Dylan Frederick, 2025)
Anything That Moves (dir. Alex Phillips, 2025)
Atropia (dir. Hailey Benton Gates, 2025)
The Battle of Chile Part II: The Coup d’État (dir. Patricio Guzman, 1976)
Beware of a Holy Whore (dir. Rainer Werner Fassbinder, 1971)
Black Mamba (dir. Belinda M Wilson, 2016)
Boys in the Sand (dir. Wakefield Poole, 1971)
Buffet Infinity (dir. Simon Glassman, 2025)
Bunnylovr (dir. Katarina Zhu, 2025)
Castration Movie Chapter III: Junior Ghosts – Premorphic Drift; a Fragmentary Passage (dir. Louise Weard, 2026)
Corey Feldman Vs. The World (dir. Marcie Hume, 2025)
The Craft (dir. Andrew Fleming, 1996)
Daisies (dir. Vera Chytilova, 1966)
Deadly Blows (dir. Nicholas Grippo, 1971)
Desire (dir. Bill Mousoulis, 1999)
The Devils (dir. Ken Russell, 1971)
Divine Hammer (dir. Hazel and Mae M., 2026)
Dogfight (dir. Nancy Savoca, 1991)
Drinking and Driving (dir. Avalon Fast and Jillian Frank, 2026)
Escape (dir. Masao Adachi, 2025)
Everything Grows in Eden (dir. Jack Johnston, 2026)
The Evil Dead (dir. Sam Raimi, 1981)
The Films of Sarah Jacobsen: I Was a Teenage Serial Killer + Mary Jane’s Not A Virgin Anymore (dir. Sarah Jacobsen, 1993/1996)
From Sand to Celluloid (dir. Darlene Johnson, Richard Frankland, Bill McCrow, Sally Riley, Rima Tamou, Warwick Thornton, 1996)
Fucktoys (dir. Annapurna Sriram, 2025)
Gangsterism (dir. Isiah Medina, 2025)
Hard Time Lover (dir. João Pedro Faro, 2026)
The Heartbreak Kid (dir. Elaine May, 1972)
His Motorbike, Her Island (dir. Nobuhiko Obayashi, 1986)
In the Land of Fish and Honey (dir. JP Meldrum and John Ledingham, 2025)
In the Realm of the Senses (dir. Nagisa Oshima, 1976)
In The Shadow of the Blue Rascal (dir. Pierre Clementi, 1986)
Ishtar (dir. Elaine May, 1987)
Jack Sargeant Selects: Nova Express (dir. Andre Perkowski, 2009-2026+)
Kamikaze Hearts (dir. Juliet Bashore, 1986)
Kōkā (dir. Kath Akuhata-Brown, 2025)
Levers (dir. Rhayne Vermette, 2025)
The Lost Sex Films of King’s Cross: About Love (dir. George + Charis Schwarz, 1973)
Mikey and Nicky (dir. Elaine May, 1976)
Ms. 45 (dir. Abel Ferrara, 1981)
The Mystical Rose (dir. Michael Lee, 1976)
The Next Time You Feel Important (dir. Gabe Bath, 2026)
Not a Pretty Picture (dir. Martha Coolidge, 1976)
Nude on the Moon (dir. Doris Wishman, 1961)
Our Hero, Balthazar (dir. Oscar Boyson, 2025)
The Passaic Textile Strike (dir. Samuel Russak, 1926)
Pink Narcissus (dir. James Bidgood, 1971)
Puppygirl (dir. Henry Hanson, 2025)
Revelations of Divine Love (dir. Caroline Golum, 2025)
Shortbus (dir. John Cameron Mitchell, 2006)
The Trick (dir. Neal Wynne, 2024)
Transcending Dimensions (dir. Toshiaki Toyoda, 2025)
Twilight Portrait (dir. Angelina Nikonova, 2011)
Ugly, Dirty, and Bad (dir. Ettore Scola, 1976)
The Watermelon Woman (dir. Cheryl Dunye, 1996)
We Have Many Names (dir. Mai Zetterling, 1976 + 1934)
Welcome to the Dollhouse (dir. Todd Solondz, 1996)
With Hasan in Gaza (dir. Kamal Aljafari, 2025)
Wolf Cat Fever (dir. Josh Sinbad Collins, 2026)
Women in Revolt! (dir. Paul Morrissey, 1971)
Full Short Line-up (in alphabetical order)
Amaltaas (dir. Xoori K. Sarhadi, 2025)
Barbie (dir. Hillary Shephard, 2025)
Chocolate or Vanilla (dir. Christina Tzidras, 2022)
CUM DOLL The Movie (dir. Bella B, 2026)
Feurwerk (dir. Timothy George Kelly, 2025)
Fuck The Devil (dir. Michel Pollklesener, 1990)
I Love to Run (dir. Noah Jordan, 2026)
(I Saw You) Shine (dir. Angus McGrath, 2026)
I Thought I Wasn’t (dir. Kim Miles, 2003)
Like That DVD Screensaver (dir. Aditya Raj Gureja, 2025)
Mouse Klub Konfidential (dir. James Robert Baker, 1976)
My Secret Boyfriend Died in a Mass Shooting (dir. Kalil Haddad, 2026)
Mystic Park (dir. John Hewison, 2026)
One Bad Day (dir. Hector Hennessey + Bianca Pritchard, 2025)
Other Kinds of Pleasure (dir. Alfio Foti, 2026)
Please Love Me (dir. Lea Rose Sebastianis, 2024)
Quantum Suicide (dir. Owen Lawie, 2026)
Steal My Life (dir. Annie Wren, 2025)
The Return of Moviejuice (dir. Gabe Bath, Emily Pottinger, Daniel Tune, Aubrey Winslow, 2025/2026)
The Silver Curtain (dir. Camille Perry, 2025)
The Stench of Eternal Bog (dir. David Tse + Rory Pippan, 2025)
The Stolen Heart (dir. Lotte Reiniger, 1934)
Tickle Tickle (dir. Christian Zakharchuk, 2024)
Title Waive (dir. Ryan Trecartin, 2026)
Try Me (dir. Hamish Bruce, 2025)
Venus, Examined (dir. Sophie Bagster, 2025)
We Aim to Please (dir. Margot Nash + Robin Laurie, 1976)
Welcome to the Cyber Rodeo (dir. Jim Muntisov, 2025)
Yolk (dir. Ing Dieckmann, 2025)
You Are Your Image And Your Image Is Mine (dir. Benjamin Woodard, 2025)
Symposium Line-up (from 11am, Sat, May 16 – titles and some guests TBA)
How Did You Get Started: Our full line-up of industry and international filmmaker guests briefly intro themselves, followed by an open, guided Q+A session. Film Clubs +
Exhibition in Australia: A roundtable of exhibitors and established film club/alternative screening operators discuss the recent boom in community screening groups and the current state of community film exhibition, and offer advice for those looking to get into the world of film clubs and societies.
Transgressive Cinema: Acclaimed author/critics Alexandra Heller Nicholas and Jack Sargeant in conversation on the topic of transgressive cinema.
BUFF Critics’ Symposium: A group of critics discuss the current state of film criticism in Australia and offer advice.
Independent Film Distribution: Established and emerging players in independent film distribution discuss all levels of releasing independent films, and offer advice for emerging filmmakers interested in self-releasing.
Festival Programming Roundtable: Jack Sargeant (Revelation Film Festival Program Director) hosts a roundtable on film festival programming featuring Jordan Bastian (former SXSW Sydney Screen Festival Director), Cerise Howard (former Melbourne Queer Film Festival Director), Felix Hubble (BUFF Festival Director/former SXSW Sydney Screen Program Manager), and Kai Perrignon (BUFF Head of Programming), discussing the state of the festival industry in Australia, and how to get your film selected for festivals.
Free Outdoor Screenings (in alphabetical order)
Dead End Drive-In (dir. Brian Trenchard-Smith, 1986) Microcosmos (dir. Claude Nuridsany + Marie Perennou, 1996) Rad (dir. Hal Needham, 1986) Report to Mother (dir. John Abraham, 1986) The Three Stooges Shorts (dir. Various, 1930–1971) Shaolin Soccer (dir. Stephen Chow, 2001)
