Europa! Europa Film Festival's 2025 Lineup Serves Up a Feast of European Cinema's Latest and Greatest
When you're not watching the highest-grossing French movie of 2024 or Sweden's latest Oscar submission, you can catch a restoration of four features by iconic filmmaker François Truffaut.
What sits at the heart of European storytelling? That's a question that one of Australia's must-attend film festivals has been pondering for three years. It was back in 2022 that Europa! Europa initially started showcasing the breadth of cinema from across Europe — surveying as many countries as it can fit into each annual program, and swinging from the latest to the greatest pictures from across the continent. 2025's event kicks off in February to explore that idea again.
Attending Europa! Europa's opening night this year means discovering what makes a French box-office hit, for starters. A Little Something Extra, directed by comedian and actor Artus, was its nation's highest-grossing homegrown movie of 2024. When it kicks off this Australian film fest in Sydney and Melbourne on Wednesday, February 12, it'll start the celebration of cinema with a tale about jewel thief and his son at a summer camp for young adults with disability.
Returning to Ritz Cinemas Randwick in Sydney, plus both Classic Cinemas Elsternwick and Lido Cinemas Hawthorn in Melbourne — both for a month, running until Wednesday, March 12 — Europa! Europa has compiled a roster of 44 movies from 26 countries. Accordingly, its latest program lets viewers dig into what drives filmmaking from Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Denmark and Estonia, and also Greece, Italy, Luxembourg, Poland, Spain, Switzerland and Ukraine. Titles from Bosnia and Herzegovina, Czech Republic, Finland, Germany, Georgia, Montenegro, Norway, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Sweden and the United Kingdom are on the list, too. Unsurprisingly, the largest contingent comes from France.
Indeed, Gallic cinema provides Europa! Europa with its centrepiece film as well — and it's an Australian premiere, with Once Upon My Mother stepping back to the 60s.
The festival's headliners bring big-name talents, as well as touching documentaries to Sydney and Melbourne. In Another End from The Wait director Piero Messina, Gael García Bernal (La Máquina) plays a mourning widower exploring tech-enhanced ways of facing grief, with Renate Reinsve (Presumed Innocent) and Bérénice Bejo (Under Paris) co-starring. The Dardenne brothers (Tori and Lokita) co-produce the Belgian tennis academy-set Julie Keeps Quiet, while Sweden's 2025 Oscar submission The Last Journey hails from Swedish journalists and TV hosts Filip Hammar and Fredrik Wikingsson, and focuses on a trip to France with the former's father.
Still on familiar faces, Borat Subsequent Moviefilm: Delivery of Prodigious Bribe to American Regime for Make Benefit Once Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan Academy Award-nominee Maria Bakalova (The Apprentice) leads the satirical Triumph, French standouts Daniel Auteuil (An Ordinary Case) and Sandrine Kiberlain (November) get farcical in Love Boat, and Mélanie Laurent (Freedom) and Guillaume Canet (All-Time High) portray Marie Antoinette and Louis XVI in their final days in The Flood.
Other highlights from the fest's slate of new titles include Spain's I Am Nevenka, about an IRL MeToo case; U Are the Universe, a Ukranian sci-fil film made during the current war; the Sundance-premiering Sebastian, about a writer who is also a sex worker; Anywhere, Anytime, a modernisation of Italian masterpiece Bicycle Thieves; and Loveable, from the producer of The Worst Person in the World — and the list goes on.
Europa! Europa's annual retrospectives keep proving a drawcard, too. After shining the spotlight on Poor Things and Kinds of Kindness director Yorgos Lanthimos in 2024, the festival is jumping back into French film history by heroing the iconic François Truffaut. Four of the French New Wave filmmaker's movies are on the lineup, all showing as new 4K restorations: Shoot the Piano Player, The Soft Skin, Two English Girls and Finally, Sunday!.
Europa! Europa Film Festival 2025 Dates
Wednesday, February 12–Wednesday, March 12 — Ritz Cinemas Randwick, Sydney
Wednesday, February 12–Wednesday, March 12 — Classic Cinemas Elsternwick and Lido Cinemas Hawthorn, Melbourne
Europa! Europa will screen in Sydney and Melbourne from Wednesday, February 12–Wednesday, March 12, 2025. For more information or to buy tickets, head to the festival's website.
