best films 2026 – Rating Frames

MIFF 2026: Darcy’s Notebook Pt.2

August 31, 2026September 6, 2026Darcy Read

From Cannes favourites to local newcomers making their mark, the Melbourne International Film Festival is a fixture in the Australian cinema calendar, with the 2026 entry in the loaded program having something for everyone. Whether you just want to get the jump on Oscar prediction morning or need to spend the last weeks of a brittle Melbourne winter in packed cinemas, the festival will provide. Below is part two of our resident festival obsessive Darcy’s notebook on what he’s seen and loved this year.

All of a Sudden (2026) – Ryusuke Hamaguchi

As a keen Drive My Car (2021) evangelist, Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s newest film, a near 200-minute luxuriation on connection, empathy, and capitalism inside a nursing home in France, was the must-see event of the festival. And it did not disappoint. With a unique pair of performances from Virginie Efira and Tao Okamoto (who shared the best actress award at Cannes) that glue you to the screen for its extended runtime, All of a Sudden has a dramatic and thematic engine you never want to leave. Whether it’s during a walk along the river or a whiteboard-assisted monologue on the cancerous nature of capitalism, Hamaguchi knows what he has in Efira and Okamoto and his characters, moving through a world of care and empathy without falling into saccharine traps that would doom a film of this nature.

But this isn’t just a talky film; it also contains perhaps the best use of natural lighting since Barry Lyndon (1975), particularly in its duration capture of sunrises and sunsets. There is a unique magic to having radical natural light changes within a durational scene, and Hamaguchi and cinematographer Alan Guichaoua build many of their extended sequences around it. Hamaguchi’s films may not be to everyone’s taste, but the observational clarity of storytelling he builds his work around should be required viewing for anyone still open to having their world altered by a work of cinema.

Minotaur (2026) – Andrey Zvyagintsev

The weaving of a simmering political turmoil with a pulpy affair plot would be an ill-fitting suit, but with Andrey Zvyagintsev, we immediately feel a cool, meticulous guidance. Coupled with a ruthless consideration by cinematographer Mikhail Krichman to achieve a level of voyeurism that probes without gawking, Zvyagintsev’s film is impressive and engrossing. Even when the film’s gentle simmer reaches boiling point, we are asked to observe and consider its characters rather than place ourselves inside their lives. A reimagining of Claude Chabrol’s 1969 classic The Unfaithful Wife — also made into the erotic thriller Unfaithful in 2002 with Richard Gere and Diane Lane — against the backdrop of the Ukraine war, wealthy local CEO Gleb (Dmitriy Mazurov) suspects his wife Galina (Iris Lebedeva) of hiding an affair. As the pressure mounts to sacrifice 14 workers to the war effort, Gleb’s family and personal turmoil begin to boil over.

The film excels as both high art drama and family melodrama through this melding of the weight of the personal and the existential. The political undertow pulling us to the violence of the sea is constant and powerfully considered, landing in a place of resonance in its final act that manages to echo Burn After Reading (2008) and postwar Soviet cinema. This high-wire act of tonal precision has to be seen to be believed, particularly with an active and engaged crowd.

Nagi Notes (2026) – Koji Fukada

A gentle, clear-eyed look at human dynamics playing out across the struggling small town of Nagi, Koji Fukada’s probing drama Nagi Notes is deeply fascinated by places and their impact on people, unfolding itself slowly but warmly. 630 kilometres outside Tokyo, Nagi is a small farming town that was forced to sell off most of its land to the government for an army base, creating a transitory aspect to the once stationary place.

The film is centred around a coming and going. The coming: an ex-sister-in-law from the city, Yuri (Shizuka Ishibashi), moves in with sculptor and farmer Yoriko (Takako Matsu), to sit for an art piece. The going: the son of a military family, Keita (Kiyora Fujiwara), tells his friend and crush HarukiIguchi (Kawaguchi Waku) he has to move away in two weeks. The joy of Nagi Notes comes from how Fukada weaves narrative and character dynamics in unexpected ways through this seemingly simple story, so the less said before viewing the better; just know you are in the hands of a caring and inquisitive writer and filmmaker.

***Sweet Milk Lake* (2026) – Harvey Zielinski**

Harvey Zielinski bursts onto the Australian film scene with a debut to remember. Confidently entering the conversation for best Aussie film of the 2020s, Zielinski writes, directs, and leads Sweet Milk Lake (2026) in dual roles as sibling pair Sam and Jake.

Jake has recently transitioned and is struggling for their place in the city while living under the shadow of his more confident and successful brother Sam. While his brother is wonderfully supportive and offers a job to them, Jake is unsure where they see themselves. On an impulse, Jake travels down to the remote country town of Sweet Milk to see his terminally ill father (Kieran Darcy-Smith), who doesn’t know about their transition. After being mistaken for his brother Sam, Jake decides to stay longer than intended in Sweet Milk. The film is a charming and unique look into wider Australian culture and how gender is performed in different contexts while never losing its narrative drive. Zielinski’s writing is assured and moves with a syncopated rhythm that allows the awkward humour and piercing family drama to arrive and crescendo at unexpected moments, making for a thrilling watch.

Josephine (2026) – Beth de Araújo

“In some ways I’ve been writing this since I was eight years old”. A to-the-core film of devastation from the intimate perspective of a child who witnesses a sexual assault and the emotional ripples of that moment. Told from the perspective of Josephine (Mason Reeves), we view the failed attempts at comfort and understanding from the adults surrounding her, particularly her parents, played by Gemma Chan and Channing Tatum.

Beth de Araújo knows in her bones that the only way to tell a story like this is through force. Some may find moments or scenes manipulative or lacking subtlety, but that is to deny the argumentative nature of the filmmaking. This is a film to be shown to all who can see it, not to be watched passively or with any remove. To understand that perspective is to know the power of Josephine.

***La Gradiva* (2026) – Marine Atlan**

A worthy winner of MIFF Bright Horizons competition, cinematographer turned writer and director Marine Atlan has crafted what could be a definitional coming-of-age film through its extraordinary blend of modernity and timelessness.

One of the best films of the year, Atlan and her co-cinematographer Pierre Mazoyer have an eye for documentary-like importance even as the scenes flow with the casualness of youth. Following a French school group on a trip to Pompeii on the precipice of their final exam results, Atlan is delicately placing her characters, with their youthful drive and view of eternality in a famous space of stolen time, swallowed by ash. There is depth here I will be mining for years to come, like staring at an ash-encased body, interpreting the life underneath by the surface and shape placed in front of us.

***Erupcja* (2025) – Pete Ohs**

A soft wisp of a modern 71-minute Godard riff starring Charli XCX as Bethany, a Londoner visiting Warsaw with her soon-to-be fiancé Rob (Will Madden). Questioned why Bethany wanted to go to Warsaw over somewhere like Paris, she responds, “it’s more romantic”. This is a half-truth, as the answer is Nel (a magnetic Lena Góra), who owns a flower shop in town.

Their connection is tectonic, as the pair will tell you. Each time they encounter one another, a volcano erupts. Like the magnificent and frightening energy of the natural event, Bethany and Nel radically change the environment around their reunions, oftentimes leaving others in the ensuing ash. Filmmaker Pete Ohs was clearly working with fragments of ideas and a loose plot coming into production, allowing the ease of connection between the cast to drive the story like the French New Wave films Erupcja is indebted to. The key cast members all have writing and producing credits here, which is deeply felt scene to scene and allows the film to reach several poignant moments inside its modest framework.

***The Only Living Pickpocket in New York* (2026) – Noah Segan**

A charming and thoughtful exploration of aging and legacy shot beautifully across the five boroughs, Noah Segan’s newest film as director longs for a previous golden age of cinema with New York streets operating as its veins. John Turturro excels as Harry, a career pickpocket making do in a world with fewer floating wallets and cash than ever before as he hustles to care for his ailing wife.

Segan’s film is Uncut Gems (2019) in a pair of moccasins, with the stakes never raising the blood pressure too high. An over-the-hill pickpocket moving through the city is a lovely way of weaving through modern life in New York. Harry’s reticence to change tactics to online or credit scams gives him an air of a Lupin-tinged gentleman thief, where even his detective rival, Allen (Giancarlo Esposito) respects him. A delightful film that works best on an older crowd.

***The Samurai and the Prisoner* (2026) – Kiyoshi Kurosawa**

Equal parts political war drama and samurai Columbo, horror master Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s adaptation of the 2021 novel The Samurai and the Prisoner (2026) moves to its own rhythms, knowing its audience is hooked to every moment.

Set in 16th-century Japan, samurai lord Murashige Araki (Masahiro Motoki) is locked in his castle as Oda Nobunaga lays siege to his home. The film begins in earnest when rival envoy Kanbei Kuroda (Masaki Suda) is captured by Murashige. The award-winning novel opens with the line “Toss him in the dungeon; do not let anyone see him and do not kill him. Keep him alive until I say otherwise.” In a time of ruthless killing and few prisoners of war, the stage is set for a defensively woven chamber drama that is keen to charm an audience by its movements towards Agatha Christie and other European-style mystery fiction. The pair of performances between Suda and Motoki is gripping and falls easily into Kurosawa’s unique film style that allows long sequences to play out naturally, ratcheting the tension inside a still frame that has made his horror features the best in the genre. Overlaying this perfected style of storytelling over a samurai chamber epic makes The Samurai and the Prisoner a wholly unique and captivating viewing experience.

***The Man I Love* (2026) – Ira Sachs**

There is a certain surreality that occurs when you’re around a sick person who, after a gruelling treatment process, returns, however fleetingly, to their previous self. An almost religious experience. Screenwriters Ira Sachs and Mauricio Zacharias know this intimately.

Handling the AIDS crisis in 1980s New York with a passion and care for those caught in its crosshairs, and how they choose to respond, Sachs imbues his characters with the dramatic tension of uncertainty and sharp edges, complicating each conversation scene with where we expect it to conclude. Rami Malek and Tom Sturridge have never been better, and with the introduction of Luther Ford to cinema with support from Rebecca Hall and Ebon Moss-Bachrach, Sachs can paint with a wider canvas than his previous couple of films to show the community and isolation of this well-documented era of American history.

MIFF 2026: Darcy’s Notebook Pt.1

August 18, 2026August 31, 2026Darcy Read

From Cannes favourites to local newcomers making their mark, the Melbourne International Film Festival is a fixture in the Australian cinema calendar, with the 2026 entry in the loaded program having something for everyone. Whether you just want to get the jump on Oscar prediction morning or need to spend the last weeks of a brittle Melbourne winter in packed cinemas, the festival will provide. Below is part one of our resident festival obsessive Darcy’s notebook on what he’s seen and loved this year.

I See Buildings Fall Like Lightning (2026) – Clio Barnard

One of the finds of the festival, a gorgeous and riveting tableau from Clio Barnard based on the novel from writer and poet Keiran Goddard, cramming what felt like a season of a revered BBC miniseries into 109-minutes with the best editing of the year by Maya Maffioli.

I’m a total sucker for Northern UK street poeticism, with its blue collar groundedness with a powerful north star of where to point the millennial finger of ennui and uncertainty at. The film with the title of the year (sharing the name with the novel) follows a tight group of young Gen Z friends growing together and apart, set amongst a constantly shifting Birmingham. With an honesty and clarity into youthful modernity and the crippling weight of housing pressure on individuals and a community. A must see.

Maddie’s Secret (2025) – John Early

There is something magical about watching a film with an extreme amount of conviction that brings a totally game audience to the edge of a cliff but still begs for more. John Early had already made a name for himself as an impressive comedian and actor, but in Maddie’s Secret (2025), we see the emergence of Early as one of the most impressive comedic filmmakers to come out of a decade struggling for cinematic laughs.

The Far From Heaven (2002) for the Bon Appétit content mill sounds like a difficult pitch to audiences, but the power and potency of the satire Early is operating from, performance to lighting elevates this to astonishing levels. Dealing with the underdiscussed world of bulimia and eating disorders with the maturity and understanding that allows it to remain as silly and extreme as it is with the knowledge the audience will never jump ship. In a just world Early and Kate Berlant will be in awards conversations.

Wicker (2026) – Eleanor Wilson and Alex Huston Fischer

An incredibly well-cast 19th-century small-town fable about a fishmonger (Olivia Colman) who asks the local basket weaver (Peter Dinklage) to make her a husband, just to get her nosy neighbours off her back. The Weaver obliges, crafting her a perfect wicker husband — played wonderfully by Alexander Skarsgård, wrapped in an astonishing wooden body made by the Wētā Workshop — asking only for coin in return. The film is a riot. With a unique take on gender struggles with its bashful comedy and storytelling echoing the Brothers Grimm, Wicker comes by its fantasy matter-of-factly, with a lyricism that keeps you on the hook for where Wilson and Fischer want to take us.

Rose (2026) – Markus Schlesinger

All gender is performance, and it can give you desires you didn’t think you possessed if you embody the performance for long enough. Markus Schlesinger and Sandra Hüller are on a very targeted wavelength in Rose, a period film about the not uncommon situation of a woman assuming the role of a man to garner a level of respect and equity they see for themselves, particularly around wartime and, notably here, postwar time.

With a considered palette from Schlesinger and cinematographer Gerald Kerkletz, Rose at once feels both in command of her situation and burdened by its crushing weight. The film gains some real drama and tension akin to The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928) in its final act, with Hüller’s rugged demeanour giving way to an unkind world when the truth begins to leak out.

We Are All Strangers (2026) – Anthony Chen

A wide tapestry of a film on family, Anthony Chen’s compelling yet frustrating new work is a tale of almosts. A rare film set and filmed in Singapore and the first Singaporean film to screen in competition in the Berlinale’s 70-plus-year history, We Are All Strangers weaves in its setting well across its 157-minute runtime, even as it feels in a rush to arrive at its destination rather than ruminate and observe its surroundings. Centring a father and son trying to make it in the rapidly changing city flooding in with new money, characters come and go through their lives (in fascinating and infuriating ways) that propel you from scene to scene.

The Fox (2026) – Dario Russo

Dario Russo’s Adelaide set film The Fox is the hottest ticket of the festival. A charming and well-cast comedy that would make a fascinating double feature with Obsession (2026), with its ideas on relationships, control, and gendered violence inside a gnarly and knowing bit of magical realism. With brilliant voice performances by Olivia Colman and the late great Sam Neill as a fox and magpie, respectively, in a quiet town, Russo’s ear for Australian idiosyncrasies makes for a wall-shaking cinema experience of locals, as the film raises its brow up at our culture of quiet contempt subdued by our heavy drinking tendencies. While not groundbreaking in any form, it is refreshing to have a proud Australian comedy making waves at the festival.

Lost Land (2025) – Akio Fujimoto

There is an overwhelming nature to docufiction that makes it a uniquely cinematic genre of storytelling, and Akio Fujimoto’s Lost Land (2025) is as good an entry point for audiences as you’ll find. The film approaches the stories of Rohingya asylum seekers through a pair of real siblings, Shomira Rias Uddin and Muhammad Shofik Rias Uddin playing nine-year old Somira and four-year old Shafi, as they have to journey from a Bangladeshi refugee camp to Malaysia to hopefully get confirmed asylum status, a necessity for a stateless people.

There are questions to be had about filmmaking ethics here akin to Nathan Fielder’s The Rehearsal (2022), but the power of docufiction comes from the blurred line of ethical artistry when a subject of such weight centres the work. Left with more ideas and questions than anything I’ve seen at the festival this year.

Mad Rush (2026) – Madellin McKenna

There’s nothing like seeing a hometown success story at the festival. At the premiere of Madellin McKenna’s debut, the Capitol was buzzing with locals eager to wrap its arms around a film so invested in the city. A madcap rush of blood to the head pierces through Melbourne streets after Madisha (Senuri Chandrani), a struggling young person fresh out of work and potentially forced to return home, is targeted by an ATO phone scam trying to bleed her for everything she’s got.

Mad Rush attempts to walk a difficult thematic and narrative tightrope, as McKenna tries to blend a high-octane movement-based thriller with a contemplative and lyrical exploration of modern life as a 20-something. Albeit in rare bursts, when the performances, editing, and narrative settle into a groove that has both tracks building together, the audience is quick to be swept up into Madisha’s world.

Rose of Nevada (2025) – Mark Jenkin

No one is doing it like Mark Jenkin. A truly singular artistic expression of the British community, wielding vintage Bolex cameras that capture no audio, giving the film a detached and mythic distortion, Rose of Nevada is a bitter, acquired taste. It touches on truly weighty subjects like the destruction of personhood for the benefit of those you may never meet through its jagged edges and abrasive storytelling, leaving the door slightly ajar to lose yourself in.

Indie film’s lynchpin weirdo, George Mackay, plays wonderfully alongside the more laissez-faire partner in Callum Turner, giving the film a beating heart surrounded by the rust and the chains. The story is best left unsaid, as it is best to uncover the strangeness of Rose of Nevada alongside its characters, entering its brittle trance at the same pace.

The Death of Robin Hood Pierces the Heart of a Legend

June 18, 2026Darcy Read

Screening provided by Madman Entertainment.

As the title suggests, The Death of Robin Hood (2026) begins with Robin Hood seemingly at the end of his journey. Somewhat of an extended coda, he has no desire to continue; Robin Hood (an aged and grizzled Hugh Jackman) spends his days pushing through the days, weighed towards the centre of the Earth by the gravity of his past. Long gone are his famous troupe who scampered across England as outlaws, robbing the rich and giving to the poor.

Instead, the famed outlaw is alone in the English hearth, making do with simple hunting to survive with no home or companionship. It is not until his old friend Little John (Bill Skarsgård) asks Robin for help rescuing his wife and daughter from bandits that the outlaw is pushed to purpose. This scene is quickly riddled with conflict, as in the same breath we learn of how Little John came about this family; having acquired them after he killed their husband and father years prior.

Filmmaker Michael Sarnoski made a name for himself with his 2021 breakout, Pig, starring Nicolas Cage, a mature and reflective look at an older man with a lifetime of regrets forced back into society through violence — all themes that also drive The Death of Robin Hood. It is fascinating that Sarnoski, the now 31-year-old American, has a deep pull to these stories and is deftly able to probe humanist questions on regret at the beginning of his artistic career.

The metatextual element of casting Hugh Jackman as the waking ghost of Robin Hood is effective, layering on his legacy as an old-fashioned showman to this storied character worthy of reinvestigation. Similar in many respects to Logan (2017), Jackman’s greatest performance as the weathered Wolverine, Robin Hood is a man with a code that can easily morph into self-mythologisation through nothing but the immovable passage of time. The stories we tell ourselves to survive, especially ones that shield us from the stories others tell about us, drive Robin, even in his withered state. Throughout the film, Robin is both correcting the record of his folklore and forgetting the names of those he has slain, a fascinating bit of oscillation that creates an engine of revisionism that powers Sarnoski’s gritty screenplay.

From Left: Hugh Jackman and Bill Skarsgård in *The Death of Robin Hood.*

Whether Sarnoski is deeply connected to the Robin Hood folk tale or just enjoyed one of many depictions across cinema, his iteration on the character is a mere shorthand to investigate the life of an outlaw defined by mythmaking and storytelling that justifies one’s violence until violence is all that remains. This is a film with a relentless drive to revise notions of history at scale through an intimate lens.

The Death of Robin Hood is an adult film that wields its violence with a sharp knife. It cares for its impact both in the moment and in how it ripples through generations. Beginning with a stark moment of brutal violence – Robin killing a teenager who has come for revenge in the night is straight out of Robert Eggers’ grimy historical epic The Northman (2022), a lynchpin inspiration here – Sarnoski is signalling to the audience the film to come. This moment is one of a long line of sons and daughters seeking revenge on Robin’s trail of blood. Even through several wistful and lyrical sequences that weave in and out of the film, it is this graphic violence that chains the story to the damp soil.

After the rescue attempt goes as expected for a film this cold and bleak, Robin is beaten and left within inches of a death he so clearly craves, and shipped out to an island priory to heal. Surprisingly, in a shrewd piece of filmmaking, this island is where we are left for the remainder of the film. The film is split in two, with Robin Hood made to support the small community led by the prioress, sister Bridgid (Jodie Comer), as his wounds heal. A bifurcated film is difficult to pull off, but Sarnoski’s lush visual lyricism creates a flowing river of moments that land.

Jodie Comer in *The Death of Robin Hood*.

Plucked from the Sheffield folk scene, musician Jim Ghedi’s score and soundtrack both shroud and dampen the opening section of the film as much as they light the scenes in the priory. Coupled with an aspect ratio shift after the first act, cinematographer Pat Scola focuses on the warmth of sunlight seemingly hitting Robin’s cheek for the first time in decades. Sarnoski is driven to guide the famed outlaw and us towards the light.

But the past cannot be willfully ignored even at an island retreat. With new visitors steadily coming to the priory for care, Robin’s desire to fade into obscurity becomes harder and harder. Coupled with this is the punishing repetition of Robin Hood not remembering those he has killed along his journey. This is the sturdy rock Sarnoski’s film is built on. The why does not matter, as the why never matters when it comes to those that carry on the legacy of those that have been lost. There is only the loss.

For a film with a loud fight scene set in front of a burning building, it surprisingly has its most gripping moment in an infirmary, involving several intimate bloodletting scenes between Comer and Jackson, with Sarnoski carefully building up the tension of his grisly film to this point. Comer elevates these moments and the back half of the film even as her character is kept to the side, with Sarnoski clearly driven by singular character portraits and how people enter and exit a person’s life.

Whether it arrives at its emotional climax in its dying moments with legitimacy is in the eye of the beholder, but Sarnoski is serious enough about his adult drama to conclude his film with an aching sentimentality that is all too rare. With a sturdy ensemble that occasionally elevates above Sarnoski’s considered lens, The Death of Robin Hood is the dramatic adult period piece probing at the heart of heroism and violence that is rarely seen on a big screen anymore. Now all we need is Sarnoski to make his Ned Kelly film.

The Death of Robin Hood is in theatres now.