Europa! Europa Film Festival Expands For Its Biggest Year Year

Returning for their fifth year, the Europa! Europa Film Festival 2026 program boasts some of Europe’s most encompassing titles of the last year, and is expanding from Sydney and Melbourne into  Brisbane, Hobart  and Auckland for the first time in its history.

“This year we present our most expansive program yet,” said  Artistic Director Spiro Economopoulos.

“With 43 films representing 22 countries across Europe, our festival brings the most distinctive voices of a diverse continent to audiences across Australia and New Zealand. From awards contender The Testament of Ann Lee  starring  Amanda Seyfried, to Willem Dafoe-led thriller The Birthday Party, as well as new films from Europe’s boldest auteurs such as Agnieszka Holland, Albert Serra and Gianfranco Rosi, the program reflects the diversity, audacity, and quality of contemporary European cinema.”

This year’s festival opens with the Australian and New Zealand premiere of The Testament of Ann Lee, an ambitious musical drama that earned one of the Venice International Film Festival’s longest standing ovations when it premiered there. 

With a Golden Globe-nominated performance from Amanda Seyfried, the musical drama presents a bold, subversive portrait of Ann Lee, founder of the religious Shakers movement, reimagining female leadership, faith and rebellion through unconventional cinematic and musical forms.

European festival darlings

The program features a carefully selected collection of high-profile European titles that have made a strong impact on the international festival circuit and at the box office over the last year, including Miguel Ángel Jiménez’s tightly wound thriller The Birthday Party; Karoline Herfurth’sWunderschöner, the follow-up to the 2022 German box-office smash Wunderschön; and the Natalie Portman-produced Arco, a stunning animated adventure following a young girl who encounters a mysterious boy who has crash-landed from a distant future.  

Europa will also be welcoming prolific German filmmaker Sönke Wortmann to present his new film The Empty Nesters to audiences in Melbourne and Sydney. Based on the best-selling novel from Jan Weiler, The Empty Nesters follows writer Hannes, whose picture-perfect life is turned upside down when his daughter announces she’s moving out of home, and his wife decides she wants to join her.  

Europa! Europa Film Festival runs in Sydney at the Ritz Cinemas in Randwick from 19 February – 19 March.