The 12-day festival will screen 122 films from 52 countries, including 10 world premieres and 27 Australian premieres.

The Adelaide Film Festival has unveiled its full 2026 program, with Martin McDonagh’s Wild Horse Nine set to open the event following its Venice premiere.

Running Oct. 14-25 across Adelaide cinemas, this year’s festival will present 122 films from 52 countries, including 10 world premieres and 27 Australian premieres.

Wild Horse Nine is the latest film from the Oscar-winning writer-director behind In Bruges, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri and The Banshees of Inisherin.

The festival’s gala program also includes the Cannes-selected Jim Queen, which will screen as its Saturday Night Party presentation, as well as a collection of recent festival prize winners. Among them are Lukas Dhont’s Coward, winner of the best actor award at Cannes; Paweł Pawlikowski’s best director winner Fatherland; Sundance directing prize recipient Ha-Chan, Shake Your Booty!; Beth De Araújo’s Grand Jury Prize winner Josephine; Sydney Film Prize winner Minotaur, from Russian director Andrey Zvyagintsev; and Rose, starring Berlin Silver Bear winner Sandra Hüller.

The special presentations strand is led by James Gray’s Paper Tiger, starring Adam Driver, Scarlett Johansson and Miles Teller, and Pressure, Adelaide filmmaker Anthony Maras’ follow-up to Hotel Mumbai. Based on David Haig’s stage play about the 72 hours preceding D-Day, Pressure stars Andrew Scott, Brendan Fraser, Kerry Condon, Chris Messina and Damian Lewis.

Also screening is Wicker, from Australian director Eleanor Wilson and Alex Huston Fischer, starring Olivia Colman as an unnamed fisherwoman. The festival will additionally mark the 30th anniversary of Scott Hicks’ Oscar-winning Shine with the premiere of a new 4K restoration and a live piano recital from Simon Tedeschi. Hicks will launch his book, Shine: Persistence of Vision, at the festival.

AFF’s closing-night gala will be the world premiere of the Adelaide Film Festival Investment Fund-backed Hell Has No Fire Escape, directed by Georgina Savage and Matthew Bate. The film follows a 63-year-old widow who inherits her late husband’s evangelical rehabilitation center and begins pursuing a new life — and an online relationship with a man posing as Jason Momoa.

Other AFFIF-supported titles include Venice premiere Agata the Writer, starring Mia Wasikowska; Tracey Rigney’s Kumarangk: Sacred Women’s Business; Bojana Novakovic’s The Forbidden Aunt; Port Arthur documentary Aftermath; and folk-horror feature Lucrum, starring Sophie Lowe, Tahlia Sturzaker and Nathan Page.

The festival has also announced that the Australian premiere of Tilda Cobham-Hervey’s feature directorial debut, It’s All Going Very Well…, will take place as a special co-presentation with the Adelaide Festival in March 2027.

Five films will compete in the festival’s Feature Fiction Competition: Chilean fantasy Donkey Princess; Myanmar-set romantic drama Fruit Gathering; Mumbai drama Lovers in the Blue Night; John Trengrove’s apartheid-era coming-of-age story The Smell of Apples; and Australian director Dominic Allen’s Italy-set Tiber.

The competition jury comprises Toronto International Film Festival CEO Cameron Bailey, actors Tilda Cobham-Hervey and Xavier Samuel, filmmaker and historian Sandeep Ray and producer Anna Vincent.

The Feature Documentary Competition includes Dragana Jurišić’s The Balkan Cowboy; Viridiana Lieberman and Quinn Whitney Wilson’s Jean-Michel Basquiat; Afsaneh Salari’s Tehran, Under the Skin; the decade-spanning transition documentary The Way You See Me; and Wolf, in which British musician Patrick Wolf opens his personal archive during a conversation with longtime friend Tilda Swinton.

Music on Film returns with Tamra Davis’ The Best Summer, assembled from footage the filmmaker shot backstage during Australia’s 1995 Summersault tour, featuring Beastie Boys, Sonic Youth, Bikini Kill, Pavement, Beck and the then-emerging Foo Fighters. The strand also includes Bill Evans documentary Everybody Digs Bill Evans, Brazilian music drama Funk and We Are the Shaggs, telling the story of the influential Wiggins sisters.

Australian independent films in the program include Genevieve Clay-Smith’s Boss Cat; Zane Borg’s coming-of-age drama River; Julia Overton and Tom Zubrycki’s documentary The Piano Tuner; CinefestOZ prize winner Sweet Milk Lake; and Martin McKenna’s Wilderness, starring Mirrah Foulkes and Yael Stone.

A world premiere of Bukul Bukal, directed by the late Rhoda Roberts with Pauline Clague, will be staged on the banks of the Port River in collaboration with Yitpi Yartapuultiku. The film profiles Yindji woman and Indigenous rights activist Henrietta Fourmile Marrie.

AFF will also present the $50,000 Bettison & James Award to Yankunytjatjara Anangu language advocate and anti-nuclear activist Karina Lester. She will appear in conversation with Gem Romuld following a screening of the 2024 documentary Britain’s Nuclear Bomb Scandal: Our Story.

“This year Adelaide Film Festival brings together highly anticipated international cinema alongside a stellar array of Australian films, in a program that celebrates master filmmakers and bold new voices,” AFF CEO and creative director Mat Kesting said.

“Support our courageous filmmakers who take our stories to the world, come party at a gala, see the filmmakers on the pink carpet or just come be part of one of our many free events — AFF is All For Film and invites everyone to join in.”