Rod Quantock: Comedy Warrior
Friday 26th of June 2:00pm FIONA COCHRANE | AUSTRALIA | 2026 | 1’55” Rod Quantock: Comedy Warrior charts the life and career of Australia’s pioneering stand-up comedian, Rod Quantock, and his tireless efforts over five decades to communicate the perils of neoliberalism and the cataclysmic urgency of climate change through comedy. Rod Quantock: Comedy Warrior
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Agridulce (Bittersweet)
Friday 26th of June 5:00pm (Australian Premiere) FRANK PAVICH | DOMINICAN REPUBLIC | 2025 | 1’38” A coming-of-age story set in the Dominican Republic, where a group of aspiring young Bachata artists search for answers to love and life through their music. In the Dominican town of Cabarete, Bachata is a way of life. While
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LOCALS + after party at Theatre Royal
Friday 26th of June 8:00pm LOCALS | REGIONAL VICTORIA | 2026 | 90′ A cornerstone of the festival, LOCALS returns for its fifth year to celebrate homegrown storytelling and champion grassroots creative voices from across the region. From heartfelt to hilarious, this vibrant collection of short-form documentaries offers a window into the people, places, and
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The Golden Spurtle
Saturday 27th of June 11:00am CONSTANTINE COSTI | AUSTRALIA | 2026 | 1’15” Once a year, contenders from around the globe descend on a picturesque village in the Scottish Highlands to compete for the title of World Porridge Champion. Amid intense rivalries, steaming bowls of porridge, and the lives of charmingly eccentric locals, we see
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How Deep is Your Love
Saturday 27th of June 2.00pm ELEANOR MORTIMER | UK | 2025 | 1’40” With deep-sea mining looming, biologists race to collect and name the undiscovered species of the abyss, the last wilderness on earth. HOW DEEP IS YOUR LOVE follows biologists as they explore the deep sea, where 70% of our planet lies hidden. As
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The Bend in the River
Saturday 27th of June 5:00pm (Australian Premiere) ROB MOSS | USA | 2025 | 1’22” Following and filming friends for nearly fifty-years. THE BEND IN THE RIVER is an exploration of the inexorable flow of aging and the unfinished project of living. The Bend in the River chronicles five close friends over nearly fifty years.
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Move Ya Body – The Birth of House + DJ Jen Moore
Saturday 27th of June 8:00pm ELEGANCE BRATTON | USA | 2025 | 1’32” Out of the underground dance clubs on the South Side of Chicago, a group of friends turn a new sound into a global movement. In the chaos of Disco Demolition Night at Comiskey Park, a teenage usher named Vince Lawrence witnessed the
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We Are Not Powerless
+ live Q & A with directors (20-30″) Sunday 28th of June 11:00am JOLYON HOFF, MUZAFAR ALI | AUSTRALIA | 2025 | 1’30” Stuck in Indonesia after Australia ‘Stops the Boats’, a group of refugees start a school and prove that hope, community and connection can change the world. Ten years ago Muzafar Ali and
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Coexistence, My Ass!
Sunday 28th of June 5:00pm (Victorian Premiere) AMBER FARES | USA, FRANCE | 2025 | 1’35” Noam Shuster Eliassi grew up the literal poster child for the Israeli-Palestinian peace process before making a hard pivot to stand-up comedy and political satire. But as the region sinks deeper into devastating violence, she must meet the moment
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Buck’s Harbor
Sunday 28th of June 5:00pm (Australian Premiere) PETE MULLER | US | 2026 | 1’37” In a remote American fishing village, where life unfolds with the seasons and the sea, Bucks Harbor explores the ways that men & boys understand their roles and themselves in a changing world. Downeast Maine is a stretch of rugged
Human Algorithm + Stelarc – Suspending Disbelief
Screening followed by In Conversation with festival guests, directors Sarah-Jane Woulahan (Human Algorithm) and Richard Moore & John Doggett-Williams (Stelarc). Friday 4th of July 5:00pm HUMAN ALGORITHMWORLD PREMIERE SARAH-JANE WOULAHAN | AUSTRALIA | 2024 | 16′ When machines reflect us, what do we see? The Human Algorithm explores how artificial intelligence is changing the way
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Man with a Movie Camera + Live Score by Underground Lovers Moda Discoteca
Friday 4th of July 8:00pm DZIGA VERTOV | RUSSIA | 1929 | 64′ A CASTLEMAINE DOCUMENTARY FESTIVAL SPECIAL EVENT. No actors, no script — just the rhythm of life. Dziga Vertov’s playful 1929 Soviet silent documentary Man With a Movie Camera revolutionised cinema with dazzling never before seen techniques and playful energy. Filmed by his
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Tracing Light
Saturday 5th of July 11:00am (Australian Premiere) THOMAS RIEDELSHEIMER | GERMANY / UK | 2024 | 99′ Where quantum physics meets art, light reveals its magic. Light, without which life itself is impossible, is the working medium and obsession of director Thomas Riedelsheimer. Light, seen only in interaction with matter, allows us to explore the
Writing Hawa
Saturday 5th of July 2:00pm (Victorian Premiere) NAJIBA NOORI | AFGHANISTAN & FRANCE | 2024 | 90′ Hazara women write their fate Filmed over five years, Writing Hawa is the story of three generations of Hazara women from the same family in Afghanistan. With unique access and empathy, director Najiba Noori films her mother, Hawa,
LOCALS + Nature Loves To Hide
SOLD OUT Saturday 5th of July 4:30pm NATURE LOVES TO HIDE LEONIE VAN EYK | AUSTRALIA | 2025 | 22′ Nature Loves to Hide follows artist John Wolseley as he paints the hidden habitats of desert animals across Australia. Filmed in the Tanami, Great Sandy Desert, and the Wimmera, the documentary captures Wolseley—often in camouflage—stealthily
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Reas + Sugar Fed Leopards Gig
Saturday 5th of July 8:00pm (Victorian Premiere) LOLA ARIAS | ARGENTINA / GERMANY / SWITZERLAND | 2024 | 82′ A CASTLEMAINE DOCUMENTARY FESTIVAL SPECIAL EVENT. The power of wishing. Reas flips the script on the prison film, blending gritty reality with explosive musical fantasy. Yoseli has a tattoo of the Eiffel Tower on her back
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Blue Road – The Edna O’Brien Story
Sunday 6th of July 11:00am (Australian Premiere) SINÉAD O’SHEA | IRELAND/ UK | 2024 | 98′ In 1960, a young Irish woman named Edna O’Brien wrote a sexually frank debut novel, The Country Girls. She became a literary sensation, writing for The New Yorker, delivering provocative interviews, and authoring screenplays. Her success enraged her writer
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Soundtrack to a Coup D’Etat
Sunday 6th of July 2:00pm JOHAN GRIMONPREZ | BELGIUM / FRANCE / NETHERLANDS | 2024 | 150′ History doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes. Soundtrack to a Coup d’État is a powerful archival documentary that dives into one of the 20th century’s great untold stories — how jazz, politics, and colonial power collided in
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The Wolves Always Come at Night
Sunday 6th of July 5:00pm (Victorian Premiere) GABRIELLE BRADY | MONGOLIA/ AUSTRALIA/ GERMANY | 2024 | 96′ Davaa and Zaya are a young nomadic couple in the vast Bayanhongor region of Mongolia who are in the throes of animal birthing season when a seismic event suddenly changes their lives. They are forced to migrate to
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Secret Mall Apartment
Sunday 28h of June 8:00pm JEREMY WORKMAN | USA | 2024 | 1’32” In 2003, eight Rhode Island artists created a secret apartment inside the busy Providence Place Mall and lived there for four years, filming everything along the way. They snuck in furniture, tapped into the mall’s electricity, and even constructed a wall, smuggling
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Look Into My Eyes
Sunday 6th of July 8:00pm (Victorian Premiere) LANA WILSON | USA | 2024 | 106′ Is it performance? Is it ‘real’? Does it matter? A group of New York City psychics conduct deeply intimate readings for their clients, revealing a kaleidoscope of loneliness, connection, and healing. In this intimate film, director Lana Wilson (‘Miss Americana’)
Love Compilations
Inspired by Wendy Clarke’s Love Tapes, The Love Compilations invites the Castlemaine community to record intimate three-minute reflections on love – forming a collective video artwork capturing a wide spectrum of voices and emotional truths. What does love mean to you? That’s the question at the heart of one of this year’s most quietly powerful
Duang’s Porridge & Congee Breakfast
Saturday 10:00am – preceding The Golden Spurtle at 11:00am Join us for a cross-cultural breakfast celebrating the humble but mighty bowl. Western Porridge — rolled oats with all the trimmings: yoghurt, fresh fruit, nuts, and non-dairy yoghurt for vegans. (Contains gluten) Vegetarian Congee — a rice and mung bean base with tofu and all good
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