Lilith Goes Galactic Lands at Sydney Underground Film Festival

by FilmInk Staff

Award-winning filmmaker Dr Joshua Belinfante will premiere his latest short film Lilith Goes Galactic at the Sydney Underground Film Festival on Saturday, September 13 at 6:30pm.

Fresh from mentoring under Werner Herzog and long-time collaborator Peter Zeitlinger at the La Selva filmmaking accelerator in La Palma, Belinfante brings to the screen a surreal story of art, loss, and intergalactic imagination.

The timing is uncanny: Herzog himself has just been celebrated at the Venice Film Festival 2025, reminding the world of his enduring cinematic legacy with the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement. Belinfante, who worked closely under Herzog’s guidance, represents the next generation of filmmakers carrying forward that spirit of bold, poetic storytelling with an underground approach.

Lilith Goes Galactic follows surrealist artist Eva Lilith Pereda, whose family’s artistic legacy was obliterated in the devastating 2021 volcanic eruption on La Palma in the Canary Islands. In the film, Pereda turns to the cosmic and the fantastical; time travel, abstraction, and her mischievous cat Minino to imagine salvaging what was lost.

Belinfante, whose own family history is tied to painters and lost artworks, was drawn to Pereda’s story through a deeply personal connection. “Sometimes when we lose something so important to ourselves, we dream of any possibility of getting it back,” Belinfante says. “Lilith’s story is one of resilience, chaos, and creativity, made all the more poignant in the aftermath of destruction.”

The film is a co-production between Finesilver Media, La Selva Coop, and the Werner Herzog Stiftung, with Herzog himself credited as a mentor. Joshua was selected along with 49 other filmmakers from around the world and was the only filmmaker from Sydney at the residency run by Spanish cooperative La selva. Joshua completed his PhD research specialising in determining whether filmmakers other than Herzog could pursue the enigmatic ecstatic truth, something that Herzog has described as poetry that transcends facts and illuminates a deeper stratum of truth.

This Sydney screening marks a homecoming for Belinfante, whose debut feature The World’s Best Film screened on SBS and at SUFF, and travelled onto more than 25 festivals worldwide. With Lilith Goes Galactic, Belinfante continues his reputation for films that blend documentary truth with surreal flights of imagination.

Screening Details: