REEL SHORTS

Sunday 22nd March, 11am
94 mins, Cinema 2, ACMI

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Full: $18
Concession: $14
ACMI Member: $12

This session is Unclassified 15+.

The Melbourne Women in Film Festival is proud to showcase the work of women and gender diverse filmmakers and storytellers. This means that we sometimes include films or panel topics that may explore difficult subjects and be confronting for some audiences. Our aim is to ensure our audience has a safe and enjoyable experience when coming along to our festival and so we have included content warnings, classification and cultural information throughout the program.

Please take the time to read the film synopses below to determine whether the session is suitable for you.

Reel Shorts returns for MWFF 2026 presenting a collection of captivating and uplifting documentaries delving into the true and human stories from Australia, Aotearoa New Zealand and the wider Moana. From intimate portraits of artists and communities to stories of returning home and to Country, these films offer diverse perspectives of the world around us.

  • Aṉangu Way

    Content Advisory: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander audiences are advised that this film may contain images and/or audio of deceased persons.

    Keenan, a Noongar and Spinifex man travels 10 hours from his home to connect with his father. Where he teaches him how to make a woomera, and he learns more about his father and the Anangu Way of life.

    Australia, 2024, 12 minutes
    English
    Director: Tace Stevens
    Writer: Tace Stevens
    Producer: Brooke Collard

  • Dance Like Everyone's Watching

    Dance Like Everyone's Watching follows Hayden, a trans Irish and pole dancer, who lives under a constant spotlight. He finds refuge on stage in two contrasting forms of dance, the rigid traditions of Irish dance and the liberating freedom of pole, expressing his gender on his own terms. Through his strength and advocacy, Hayden shines as a beacon of light for the trans community. At its heart, the film is an uplifting celebration of resilience and the joy of dancing to the beat of your own drum.

    Australia, 2025, 14 minutes
    English
    Director: Ash Hingston
    Writer: Ash Hingston
    Producer: Ash Hingston

  • Darlinghurst Eats Its Young

    Content Advisory: Contains themes relating to suicide.

    When Madeleine is a teen, she meets Maggie who welcomes her into her Darlinghurst fold. Here Madeleine feels accepted as part of a group of people who didn’t care who she was. In their inner-city enclave of squats, Madeleine finds a new kind of family with Maggie at the helm. The 20-something Darlinghurst group comes of age through alt music, drugs, art and friendship…but some of them don’t make it.

    Australia, 2025, 16 minutes
    English
    Director: Madeleine Preston
    Producer: Anthony Bautovich

  • Oceanbone

    Australian Premiere

    Across oceans and centuries, Indigenous ancestors remain trapped in museum vaults—stolen, studied, and silenced. Oceanbone is a visually haunting and deeply personal journey into the fight for repatriation, where history, poetry, and activism collide. Through striking imagery of museum corridors, ancestral rituals, and the vast Pacific, Oceanbone reveals the colonial legacies that displaced these remains—and the urgent movement to return them. As the waves carry their names once more, the film stands as both an elegy and a call to justice: the ancestors must go home.

    USA, 2025, 9 minutes
    English
    Director: Lani Cupchoy
    Writer: Lani Cupchoy
    Producer: Lani Cupchoy

  • Burst

    Inside their streetlamp-lit car, we meet Danisa “the Serpent” Martis, an Australian-South East Asian drag and performance artist. We learn that in the beginning, this car is where they used to apply their makeup before gigs - under a streetlight in a deserted car park, for doing this in their family home was never an option.

    Australia, 2025, 5 minutes
    English
    Director: Melle Branson

  • Ornmol

    Content Advisory: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander audiences are advised that this film may contain images and/or audio of deceased persons.

    In the Kimberley region in northwestern Australia, a small community school ends each day with the Joonba ritual, in which all the children dance. This connection to their culture and Country helps the young people to develop a deep trust in themselves and their surroundings. Ornmol accompanies the children of Kupungarri as they collect ochre and prepare to dance at one of the biggest cultural events of the year, the Mowanjum Festival. Their excitement grows day by day.

    Australia, 2025, 10 minutes
    Ngarinyin, English
    Director: Marlikka Perdrisat
    Producers: Marlikka Perdrisat, Jayde Harding, Anna Kaplan

  • The Oldest Heart

    Victorian Premiere

    The Oldest Heart is a short documentary that follows the inspiring journey of Australia’s oldest female amateur boxer, Lyn Joy Mills, who at 71, embarks on an extraordinary journey toward her first official fight.

    Australia, 2024, 14 minutes
    English
    Director: Jessica Sherlock
    Writer: Jessica Sherlock
    Producer: Jessica Sherlock

  • Fearlessli

    Australian Premiere

    New mum Tina, alone and struggling, is paid a visit by her aunts Deidre and Maud. Can these larger-than-life women be real or are they a figment of her exhausted mind? When their insistence to help puts her daughter’s life in danger, Tina must choose between fighting them on her own, or reaching out to her best friend Jo for help.

    Aotearoa NZ, 2025, 10 minutes
    English, Mandarin Chinese
    Director: Lee Li
    Writer: Lee Li
    Producer: Tyler Redmond