Gold Coast Film Festival
This year's feast of film on the Gold Coast includes movies starring Carey Mulligan, Pete Murray and Peter Andre.
Overview
When the Gold Coast Film Festival kicks off for 2025, it'll launch with a Carey Mulligan-starring British comedy about a man keen to get his favourite musicians back together. By the time that it wraps up after a 12-day run, the event will have seen Pete Murray and Peter Andre grace its screens as actors, and also walk its red carpets. This year's event isn't solely focusing on flicks with a connection to music, but that theme is coming through anyway. Two more examples: documentary Pavements, which focuses on the band Pavement but is far from your standard doco, and a retro session of musical favourite Grease.
Mulligan (Spaceman) features in The Ballad of Wallis Island, while Murray makes his first feature film in Blue Horizon and Andre takes his first lead movie role in dramedy Jafaican. Story-wise, the first also involves a lottery winner on an isolated island, the second follows a music star who might be heading to jail and the third — which is world-premiering on the Gold Coast — focuses on a small-time criminal attempting to rustle up cash fast to look after his grandmother.
Across Wednesday, April 30–Sunday, May 11, GCFF 2025 also has sport in the spotlight via documentaries Queens of Concrete, about three skateboarders trying to balance being teens with attempting to score an Olympics berth; 7 Beats Per Minute, which hones in on freediving champion Jessea Lu; and Ballkids, chronicling the eponymous position at the Australian Open. The Edge, another world premiere, chronicles the experience of being an elite athlete for three women, including Australian powerlifter Lily Riley. In The Cigarette Surfboard, too, surfer Taylor Lane uses his love for riding the waves as a way to learn and raise awareness about protecting the beaches, especially from cigarette butts.
Among this years' Australian contingent — in addition to Blue Horizon and the bulk of the sports-related titles above — drama Kangaroo Island charts a homecoming to the place that gives the movie its name, Hagar's Hut puts a young girl who is escape abuse at its centre, romance Christmas Keepsake adds a festive layer, body-swapping drives Carnal Vessels and My Eyes is based on true events as it tells of an optometrist attempting to save her daughter's sight. My Tai is a comedy but it might feel timely, given that it's about a bar threatened by an impending cyclone.
The international lineup includes Japanese drama Cottontail, French comedy Funny Birds, India's Together at 35, Yellowjackets star Sophie Nelisse in the World War II-set Irena's Choice and a bookseller endeavouring to avoid escaping into fantasy in France's Jane Austen Wrecked My Life — and also Architecton, a musing on architecture from Victor Kossakovsky, the director behind the 2020's stunning animal-centric documentary Gunda.
For attendees keen for a feast of short films, SIPFEST, Shorts in Paradise remains on the GCFF lineup as well, screening for free on the HOTA Outdoor Stage. And for those eager to do more than watch movies, the Women in Film Lunch is back, while the Gold Coast Film Festival Awards Gala will feature a celebration of 2025 Chauvel Award-winner Robert Connolly (The Dry, Force of Nature: The Dry 2, Magic Beach).
