Sydney Underground Film Festival

Overview

George A Romero has been called "the father of the zombie film". The late, great director — the creative force who helped usher in a horde of shuffling undead-focused movies thanks to his iconic and influential Night of the Living Dead in 1968 — is also the father of a new zombie flick-loving filmmaker. When you're the daughter of the man who is also responsible for Dawn of the Dead, Day of the Dead, Land of the Dead, Diary of the Dead and Survival of the Dead, and you're making your directorial debut, adding a new addition to the horror genre clearly just comes naturally.

Tina Romero's Queens of the Dead is a horror-comedy about a Brooklyn warehouse drag party that gets overrun by a zombie outbreak. It's also the opening-night film at Sydney Underground Film Festival for 2025. That's how the event is kicking off its 19th year — with gore, glitter, and the no-longer-living terrorising the dance floor and eating flesh — with SUFF screening at Dendy Newtown from Thursday, September 11–Sunday, September 14.

One year out from celebrating its next huge milestone, 2025's ode to wild, weird, wonderful, surreal and sublime cinema has anniversaries on the brain already. Marking 45 years of Xanadu is one big highlight, complete with a disco-themed afterparty at Bootleggers after the screening. Or, you can catch a 30th-anniversary session of Steve Buscemi (Wednesday)- and Catherine Keener (Joker: Folie à Deux)-starring indie comedy Living in Oblivion instead.

Still on blasts from the past, SUFF is also heading back to the 80s with cult-classic UHF, where Weird Al Yankovic (The Naked Gun) plays a man who finds himself becoming the manager of a low-budget television station. You won't just be watching and hearing the picture, either — you'll also be smelling an array of scents due to the return of SUFF's scratch 'n' sniff experience, complete with cards giving you the full sensory treatment.

Courtesy of the rest of the program, when audiences aren't checking into Japanese horror Tokyo Evil Hotel, catching Cheech & Chong's Last Movie or charting Butthole Surfers' career in documentary Butthole Surfers: The Hole Truth and Nothing But, then everything from Ebony and Ivory from An Evening with Beverly Luff Linn and The Greasy Strangler's Jim Hosking to dark comedy Snatchers and exploitation horror Pater Noster and the Mission of Light awaits.

Plus, among SUFF's 2025 documentaries, Coexistence, My Ass! focuses on Israeli Persian actor-turned-activist/comedian Noam Shuster-Eliassi, Yellow House Afghanistan explores life under Taliban rule, The Life and Films of Andy Milligan pays tribute to its filmmaking namesake, the Iggy Pop-narrated Exorcismo dives into Spain's "Clasificada S" cinema and Occupy Cannes is all about Troma's efforts at one of the world's most-prestigious film festivals.

When it wraps up for this year, the festival is closing with the 16mm-shot Fucktoys, which takes inspiration from tarot's Major Arcana cards as it follows a hustler seeking salvation.