The Multicultural Film Festival returned this year with quiet conviction, shining a light on the strength of refugee communities through stories that carried more weight than spectacle.
Timed to coincide with Refugee Week, the evening was hosted in at at ACMI Cinemas and opened with a Welcome to Country from Uncle Shane Charles, whose words circled back to one idea of hope. “Storytelling never stops,” he said, and the rest of the night proved him right.
The event drew a mix of cultural leaders and screen professionals. Parliamentary Secretary for Multicultural Affairs Iwan Walters MP took to the stage early, reminding the audience that Victoria’s strength lies in its ethnic diversity.
Bwe Thay, Chairperson of the Victorian Multicultural Commission, continued in the same spirit, while Professor Susan Kerrigan from Swinburne University and SBS’s Kathryn Fink spoke about the role of storytelling in bridging communities and bringing quiet voices to the surface.
But the real heart of the night lay in the short films. Each piece, however brief, carried a depth that needed no frills. One that stood out was Old Faces, a reflective piece featuring a Russian proverb: “The morning is wiser than the evening.” That line stuck with many in the audience because its simple truth hit deeply, especially in a room full of people watching stories about displacement, trauma, migration, and resilience.
The awards honoured both craft and courage. You Are My Tomorrow took home Best Victorian Short Film, with Gabriel scooping the People’s Choice Award in the same category.
The Best National Film went to Housekeepers, which many in the audience, including our student delegate, found particularly moving. For nonfiction, Outpicker was awarded Best Victorian Short, with Dance with Pride earning an honourable mention.
Mechanical Resonance was judged Best International Short Film, with Chuparrosa noted as a runner-up. Meanwhile, the Chairperson’s Refugee Stories Award went to The Way to Freedom, a poignant piece that captured the raw interiority of forced migration. Echoes of Home received an honourable mention here too.
There was no glitz, no fast-moving montages or forced slogans. Just the slow burn of lived experience shared on screen. Between the official speeches, festival brochures, and quiet gasps from the crowd, one theme returned: storytelling, in all its forms, allows people to be seen as more than just statistics or backstories.
Our student representative, who attended as part of the Indian Sun network, said the festival “felt less like a gala and more like an evening of shared silence, reflection, and slow applause.” Their personal favourite, Housekeepers, was described as a film that “lets the chaos of a small domestic world speak to a much bigger displacement.”
Sometimes, the most powerful nights in a city like Melbourne don’t involve celebrities or red carpets. They involve sitting in a theatre full of strangers and hearing the echoes of someone else’s struggle stitched into your own. The morning may indeed be wiser than the evening, but the films of the night made the hours count.
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