After a massively successful first year, bringing over 2,500 punters to Brunswick West, Brunswick Underground Film Festival (BUFF) is back, with its second edition launching this May in Melbourne.
From the minds behind cult cinema collective Static Vision, BUFF has become the city’s much-needed home for forward-thinking, transgressive and independent cinema. From Thursday 14 May – Sunday 17 May, BUFF returns to the heart of Brunswick with a program twice the size of its 2025 edition, with bold new cinema, and retrospective titles that celebrate the undeniable force of boundary-pushing filmmaking.
Expanding to four days and six screens at Balam Balam Place and Brunswick Picture House, BUFF will present 69 feature films and 36 short films. Feature premieres include Safdie-producer Oscar Boyson’s Our Hero, Balthazar, Katarina Zhu’s cam-girl drama Bunnylovr (featuring Rachel Sennott), and The Moment breakout star Hailey Benton Gates’ Sundance-winning Atropia.
Anniversary screenings feature a rare run of Ken Russell’s 1971 shocker The Devils, a full retrospective of revolutionary comic filmmaker Elaine May, and a 45th anniversary screening of Abel Ferrara’s infamous Ms .45.
The festival also showcases new works from emerging independent filmmakers, such as Everything Grows In Eden from Australian filmmaker Jack Johnston and Annapurna Sriram’s SXSW award-winning F***toys (tickets to this BUFF session sold out in one day).
To further BUFF’s mission to keep cinema accessible for all, the festival is taking the unprecedented step of freezing the price of festival passes ($135 for access to 20+ sessions across the extended weekend), and dropping the price of a single ticket from $17.50 to $15 general, $12.50 concession, with $10 tickets available for unwaged patrons.
Additionally, BUFF is doubling the size and length of its program and will also feature a choose-your-own-adventure Friday night of triple features, numerous free family-friendly outdoor screenings (headlined by Stephen Chow’s Shaolin Soccer) and a free industry symposium aimed to upskill emerging critics, filmmakers and exhibitors.
This year’s program has a no clash rule between session blocks, and with both venues a short stroll from each other, it’s easier than ever for audience members to make a day of it and get the most out of their multifilm passes.
Festival Director Felix Hubble said:
“Art and entertainment should be accessible to everyone. We significantly exceeded all of our best-case-scenario attendance goals last year, and now we’re keen to pay it forward to our community.
We’re bringing the spirit of underground cinema to even more people this year. BUFF 2026 is bigger, stronger, and more accessible than ever.”
Festival Headliners
The second annual BUFF Opening Night will screen Ken Russell’s massively controversial The Devils (1971), to celebrate its 45th anniversary. Uncut and uncensored in its full (unholy) glory, this religious shocker gets to enjoy everlasting life as it’s shown on the big screen for fans and curious newcomers alike.
Starring Vanessa Redgrave and Oliver Reed, this feverish fantasy, adapted from real historical events in 17th century France (and Aldous Huxley’s ensuing novel), pushes the boundaries of delirium with provocative religious imagery, setting the stage for a festival full of unfamiliar wonders.
John Cameron Mitchell’s iconic, pulsating explosion of identity, gender and sexual expression, Shortbus (2006), will be screened in glorious 4K for Closing Night of this iteration of BUFF. Even after 20 years, the film still breaks new ground with its achingly raw focus on its characters’ emancipation of identity and paths to self discovery. A unique nexus of art, music, politics and sex, building up to a very satisfying climax.
The latest chapter of a global trans phenomenon reaches local shores, as BUFF hosts the Australian Premiere of Castration Movie Anthology iii. Junior Ghosts – Premorphic Drift; a Fragmentary Passage (2026). The project has become a significant force in underground cinema’s trans new wave, a cinema verite series making history through its lengthy runtimes.
Action-packed Australian underground film 100% Pure Rage (2025) will have its Victorian premiere, following a sold-out run at SXSW Sydney. Shot for just $3000 by a team of university students in Brisbane, the film is a heart-racing, non-stop cavalcade of violence with ingenious, low-budget practical and digital effects, pushing the limits of what can be achieved within meagre means.
100 years after its initial release, cerebral Japanese silent drama A Page of Madness (1926) will be screened from a new restoration. Initially lost for 45-years of its lifespan, the cryptic masterpiece — filled with stunning dreamy visuals — will grace the screen accompanied by a new live score from Australia’s queen of noise, Uboa.
Elaine May Retrospective
Brunswick Picture House plays host to all four films directed by the much-loved Elaine May: a quadruple feature of big laughs, abrasive anti-heroes and shaggy 70s style.
The comedy legend pairs up with Walter Matthau in screwball A New Leaf (1971);a hilarious honeymoon nightmare follows with The Heartbreak Kid (1972); next up is mob masterpiece Mikey and Nicky (1974), starring John Cassavetes and Peter Falk; and, finally, her infamous flop Ishtar (1987), whose modern reclamation proves that May’s undersung comic genius is still being discovered by new fans today.
Live Scores
This year, BUFF will lay host to multiple live music events, accompanying films celebrating their 100th anniversaries. Highlights include acclaimed dark ambient/drone artist Uboa, who will be making a rare live appearance, performing an all-new live score for once-lost Japanese asylum-set psychological horror film A Page of Madness (1926), as well as an early morning performance from slowcore musician Pat Johns, accompanying The Passaic Textile Strike (1926), a film made to raise funds for an ongoing workers’ action.
Saturday Sex/Sexuality Sessions
Across a libido-testing twelve-film marathon, BUFF’s Static Vision screen is set to get steamy. Giddy nudist flick Nude on the Moon (1961) acts as foreplay, before Catherine Breillat’s brilliant A Real Young Girl (1976) and À Ma Souer! (2001) capture the bleak, aching underside in coming-of-age.
Katharina Zhu’s daring debut Bunnylovr (2025) gives viewers an intimate peek into the life of a camgirl. The Lost Sex Films of King’s Cross: About Love (1973) shines a light on secret Sydney subcultures in the 1970s. Then, the party comes to an explosive end with three erotic works from 1971: Pink Narcissus, Boys in the Sand and Deadly Blows. Ripe with desire, beauty, danger and freedom, it’s a day of unforgettable and little-seen big screen pleasures — adults only, in case you hadn’t guessed.
Other Highlights
Straight from Sundance, where it won a Grand Jury Prize, former Vice reporter Hailey Benton Gates’ Luca Guadagnino-produced Atropia (2025) finds Alia Shawkat (Arrested Development) amongst a troupe of military role-players who help prepare soldiers for combat in Iraq: lust in the dust ensues.
Ten years in the making, Corey Feldman vs. the World (2026) is an intimate and shocking behind the scenes documentary on the former child star’s ill-fated musical project, his crusade against Hollywood predators, and his ironic downfall when he is accused of abuse himself.
BUFF mainstay/Canadian wunderkind Avalon Fast returns with her latest feature (co-directed by Jillian Frank), Drinking and Driving (2026), a gorgeous, moving mumblecore throwback charting the lives of aimless, dysfunctional twenty-somethings, premiering in Australia a mere month after its US debut at LA’s Festival of Movies.
With Hasan in Gaza (2026) follows acclaimed Palestinian documentary filmmaker Kamal Aljafari as he searches Gaza for an old cellmate who has almost certainly passed away. A follow-up to last year’s Lost Sex Films of King’s Cross session, About Love (1973) collects further artefacts from George and Charis Schwarz, two of Sydney’s most notorious socialites and some of Australia’s earliest sex film producers.
Rounding out the program highlights are 45th anniversary screenings of two grindhouse favourites: Ms .45 (1981), Abel Ferrara’s genre-defining but rarely-screened revenge thriller, and Sam Raimi’s iconic The Evil Dead (1981), screening in its original aspect ratio with original mono soundtrack.
There’s so much to enjoy at the festival.
Brunswick Underground Film Festival runs 14 – 17 May at two venues. Balam Balam Place, 15 Phoenix Street Brunswick and Brunswick Picture House, 510-512 Sydney Road Brunswick Vic 3056.
Tickets are on sale now and available at the website.
Website: https://buff.film/
Socials: https://www.instagram.com/brunswickunderground/
Hero image: still from The Evil Dead, screening at the Festival in its original aspect and mono soundtrack.
