The Melbourne International Film Festival named its 2026 award nominees on Friday, with more than $300,000 in prizes attached. The festival runs from 6 to 23 August in cinemas across Melbourne and regional Victoria, and online through ACMI's Cinema 3 platform from 14 to 30 August.
The largest single prize is the $140,000 Bright Horizons Award, now in its fifth year and open only to first and second features. Ten films are nominated, all Australian premieres: Big Girls Don't Cry (Paloma Schneideman), Blue Heron (Sophy Romvari), Elephants in the Fog (Abinash Bikram Shah), Goodbye, Cruel World (Felix de Givry), Josephine (Beth de Araujo), La Gradiva, Sweet Milk Lake (Harvey Zielinski), The Friend's House Is Here (Hossein Keshavarz and Maryam Ataei), Wicker (Eleanor Wilson and Alex Huston Fischer) and Yesterday the Eye Didn't Sleep (Rakan Mayasi).
“The first and second features you'll find throughout the Bright Horizons Competition are some of the boldest and most brilliant works of new auteur cinema that you'll see this year, anywhere," the MIFF artistic director, Al Cossar, said. Wicker opens the festival, and Wilson and Fischer will attend the gala screening.”
The Blackmagic Design Best Australian Director Award carries $50,000 and a URSA Cine 12K camera valued at $27,500. Four directors are nominated: Harvey Zielinski for Sweet Milk Lake, Dario Russo for The Fox, Hyun Lee for French Girls and Maddelin McKenna for Mad Rush. Zielinski is the only name in both competitions.
The Uncle Jack Charles Award, worth $20,000, goes to an Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander screen creative. The nominees are Charles Perrurle Perkins for The Native Police, Keinan William McGillivray Pethybridge and Marcus Raymond for Man Wearing a Helmet, Kieran Satour and Tyson Perkins for Facing the Numbers, Talia Liddle for Protest on the Dancefloor, and Tammy Lee Rock for Queens to the Front.
The MIFF Shorts Awards carry a $50,000 pool and are presented on Sunday 16 August at Melbourne Town Hall, the 65th time they have been run. The Schools Youth Jury Award is worth $10,000, is presented by Collarts and is decided by three young filmmakers from this year's Top Screen class. The Intrepid Audience Award is voted by ticket holders and pays in travel rather than cash.
The money behind the two biggest prizes comes from opposite directions. VicScreen, the Victorian government's screen agency, supports the Bright Horizons Award, which makes the festival's richest prize a public grant paid to individual filmmakers. The director's award is underwritten by Blackmagic Design, a Melbourne camera manufacturer, and more than a third of its value is paid in the company's own hardware.
The awards are presented on Saturday 22 August at Rydges Melbourne, the night before the festival closes.
