Antenna Documentary Film Festival Celebrates Captivating Non-Fiction Cinema
Image: Johatsu - Into Thin Air
The Antenna Documentary Film Festival returns to Sydney for its 13th presentation with an exciting program of 50 of the finest and most captivating documentaries produced globally in the past year.
The popularity of this festival and increased admissions over the years highlights that there is a huge appetite amongst documentary enthusiasts for inventive and tantalizing non-fiction cinema from around the world.
“I am very proud of this lineup as a whole,” said Festival Director Dudi Rokach. “Each documentary is imaginative, cinematic, and provocative, and I believe together they demonstrate the endless potential of documentary cinema in the hands of a great filmmaker.”
Twelve films will be screened as part of the Feature Documentary Competition, which offers the winning filmmaker a $10,000 cash prize sponsored by Macquarie University.
Hybrid psycho-thriller Small Hours of the Night, poetic road movie Soul of the Desert and an AI generated film About a Hero are amongst the hopefuls for the cash prize.
Award-winning director Penny Lane who has been critically acclaimed for her directorial work on films including Our Nixon (2013), Nuts (2016) and Confessions of a Good Samaritan (2023) will be a guest at the festival. She will be presenting a collection of cinematic gems from the past.
There will also be a day of industry talks and masterclasses in the Doctalk program with international and Australian filmmakers, including an interview with Basil Tsiokos the programmer of the Sundance Film Festival, which should be of interest to cinephiles.
Three Australian feature documentaries and 12 Australian shorts will also screen at the festival and From Ground Zero, a collection of 22 short films made in Gaza, give Gazan filmmakers the voice to detail the untold stories of the current war on film.
Highlights of the Antenna Documentary Film Festival 2025 program
With so many documentaries to choose from including Australian premieres, here are some so the highlights that should be of interest:
Russians At War is a documentary screening that should prove to be controversial in light of the events in recent years. Anastasia Trofimova is a Russian-Canadian filmmaker who gains unprecedented access to follow a Russian Army battalion in Ukraine.
Johatsu – Into Thin Air In Japan thousands of people disappear voluntarily every year and incredibly there are companies which are ready to aid these people to disappear – they are called ‘Johatsu’ which translates to ‘evaporated’. Thought-provoking and intriguing viewing.
Union – A powerful Sundance winner, this documentary chronicles a group of Amazon workers in Staten Island, New York, as they take on one of the world’s most powerful corporations and captured is their courageous fight to unionize their warehouse.
Look Into My Eyes – For something a little creepy this documentary about seven very unique people from New York who call themselves psychics, should send shivers down your spine.
The Whitehouse Effect – This engaging documentary details the dramatic origin of the climate crisis and the political battles that followed during the George H.W Bush administration.
Ultimately, it’s been said that we shouldn’t necessarily put Antenna in opposition to mainstream films. Instead, Antenna provides access to a different part of the filmmaking landscape that some cinema lovers haven’t been exposed to. So, if you love cinema, don’t pass on the mainstream, but take this opportunity to discover new cinematic possibilities.
Antenna Documentary Film Festival 2025
On until February 16, at Dendy Newtown & Ritz Cinemas.
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