28th edition of the Antipodes International Film Festival

Launched in 1999 in Saint-Tropez, the Rencontres Internationales du Cinéma des Antipodes showcases Australian and New Zealand cinema and promotes cultural exchange and friendship among our three countries.

It also aims to facilitate encounters between professionals and the public and to offer an opportunity to discover a culture and a film tradition that is not unknown but rather underappreciated.
Held in Saint-Tropez, these events also give residents of Saint-Tropez and the Var region the opportunity to explore the Northern Hemisphere, while promoting this beautiful village, whose history is intertwined with the arts and culture—whether through literature, painting, film, or music...

Follow the stars to the Festival des Antipodes: next stop, Saint-Tropez.
From across the seas, guided by the stars, the best of Australian and New Zealand cinema comes to the Star Cinema in Saint-Tropez. As work continues on the future La Renaissance Cultural Center—a renovation that will provide a magnificent setting for cinema and the arts on the legendary Place des Lices— the 28th edition of the Antipodes Festival will offer a 2026 program that’s as rich and eclectic as ever at the Star Cinema, ideally located near the superb Museum of the Gendarmerie and Cinema, where you can follow Louis de Funès in “The Gendarme of Saint-Tropez,” stroll along the port of Saint-Tropez with Claude Chabrol’s “Les biches,” or dance wildly with Brigitte Bardot in “And God Created Woman.” And as you leave the museum, you can head straight to the ends of the earth to explore little-known cinema and let your curiosity carry you on a journey to discover Australian and New Zealand cinema, the vastness of this Terra Australis, the earth’s energy in the land of the long white cloud through a wide range of feature films and short films, documentaries, and discussions—and, of course, curated by Céline Emery-Demion (Red Dunes Gallery), a beautiful, eclectic, and refined exhibition of Aboriginal artworks, set in a location brimming with charm and history: the Vasserot washhouse.

To whet your appetite, here are a few sneak peeks at the 2026 edition. Always a staple of the program, the Antipodes Juniors selection will once again feature some fifteen short films in competition, judged by nearly a hundred high school students—whether they come, for example, from the Lycée du Golfe de Saint-Tropez, the Lycée de Lorgues, or the Lycée de Saint-Raphaël—students who traditionally form a serious jury, fully aware of their responsibility to select the recipient of the Nicolas Baudin Prize.

And among the films coming to Saint-Tropez that will take you on a journey all the way to Australia: “The Canary” by Emily Lowe, a debut feature film set in 19th-century Western Australia, in which the heroine finds herself alone with a canary on a rowboat in the open sea, facing the ocean and the wild coastline. “Birthright” by Zoe Pepper, a black comedy in which parents are, to their great dismay, forced to take in their son and his pregnant wife—who have just been evicted from their home—at their villa. “Spit” by Jonathan Teplitzky, a slapstick comedy in which David Wenham reprises the role of Spit, a naive and mischievous con artist who, upon returning to Australia, finds himself locked up in a migrant detention center. Not to mention “The Run,” a gripping thriller in which a young mother and a smuggler (a surprising Callan Mulvey, whom we welcomed to the festival in 2000) flee through a locked-down Australia ravaged by a mysterious infertility crisis. From New Zealand, “Piece of My Heart” by Fiona Samuel—who will be in residence in Menton this October—is a work inspired by Renee Taylor’s 1995 novel, which tells the story of young single mothers in NewNew Zealand in the 1960s, facing stigma and the adoption of their children.

Not to mention the documentaries, including “The Dark Emu Story” by our 2024 jury president, Aboriginal filmmaker Allan Clarke, about the controversy sparked by Bruce Pascoe’s bestseller that prompted Australia to rethink its history, as well as “Emily: I Am Kam” by Danielle MacLean, about the great Indigenous painter Emily Kam Kngwarray, “Welcome to Babel” by James Bradley, which follows Chinese-Australian artist Jiawei Shen as he creates a monumental 130-square-meter painting chronicling the tumultuous history of communism, and from New Zealand “The Haka Party Incident” by Katie Wolfe, a look back at the actions of young Māori who, in 1979, protested against an engineering students’ end-of-year parade in which participants marched while performing a racist and insulting Haka.

But shh—we’re not going to give everything away right away! So come to Saint-Tropez from October 15 to 18 at the Star Cinema for an exceptional 28th edition of the Festival des Antipodes.

Bernard Bories AM
President of Cinéma des Antipodes

From Thursday 15 to Sunday 18 October 2026.

Free of charge. Admission is free, except for the closing film, which is by invitation only on Saturday, October 17, at the Cinéma Star.