The 19th annual Sydney Underground Film Festival (SUFF) is coming – hitting Sydney in September to celebrate bold, boundary-pushing independent cinema.
The festival, established in 2007, has become a cornerstone of Sydney’s cultural scene with its eclectic programme showcasing the best in independent, experimental, and provocative filmmaking.
“Underground film at its best doesn’t just break rules — it reimagines what cinema can be,” Festival Director Nathan Senn says. “This year, SUFF celebrates the artists who are doing just that: fearless female filmmakers, radical Australian auteurs, and emerging voices who aren’t asking for permission — they’re forging new cinematic languages.”
“The films in this year’s programme are provocative, unruly, visionary; they unsettle and electrify in equal measure. At a time when sameness dominates, SUFF takes pride in being a home for the strange, the subversive, and the gloriously unclassifiable.”
In 2025, audiences can expect a line-up of films documentaries and shorts that challenge the status quo and explore the fringes of cinematic expression.
Things kick off with the Australian premiere of ‘Queens Of The Dead’ from breakout director Tina Romero. It’s a riotous, blood-spattered horror-comedy which slays with equal parts camp, rage, and community. Then, on the other end of the festival is the Australian premiere of ‘F…toys’, featuring a special post-screening Q&A from director/writer Annapurna Sriram. It’s a candy-coated descent into chaos, shot on 16mm and soaked in pastel grit.
After the success of the 2024 ‘Female Trouble’ scratch ’n sniff experience, SUFF and co-presented Scented Storytelling and Snivure are bringing back scented cinema, with Jay Levey’s wacky cult comedy ‘UHF’. It stars ‘Weird Al’ Yankovic and is a glorious celebration of creativity, underdogs, misfits, and the golden age of weird TV.
Other highlights include vibrant and timely documentary, ‘Coexistence, My Ass!’ from Amber Fares. . . A remastered screening of psychedelic fantasy ‘Xanadu’ starring Olivia Newton-John, and a Movie Bingo screening of Tom DiCillo’s ‘Living In Oblivion’.
As always there’l be documentaries celebrating fearless voices, radical creativity and untold stories like ‘Yellow House Afghanistan’, ‘The Degenerate: The Life And Films Of Andy Milligan’, and ‘Exorcismo’.
Boundary-pushing features in this year’s programme include Sydney-based erotic artist George Schwarz’s ‘About Love’, psychosexual dark comedy thriller ‘Anything That Moves’, and blood-drenched, brain-melting retro exploitation horror ‘Pater Noster And The Mission Of Light’.
Premiering in Australia are ‘Snatchers’, ‘Tokyo Evil Hotel’, Ebony And Ivory’, and ‘Jimmy And Stiggs’. . . And premiere in New South Wales are ‘Skeleton Girls: A Kidnapped Society’ and ‘The Pee Pee Poo Poo Man’.
There’ll also of course be programmes of shorts like the mind-warping LSD FACTORY offering, WTF! showcasing shorts not for the faint of heart, expressions of sexuality in LOVE/SICK, genre-crossing Australian independent cinema in HOMEBAKED SHORTS, eye-opening bite-sized docos in STRANGER THAN FICTION, and the TAKE48 Film Challenge.
Check out the full programme.
Sydney Underground Film Festival 2025 is on from 11-14 September.
