Australian films about spiritualism

When a group of friends discover how to conjure spirits using an embalmed hand, they become hooked on the new thrill, until one of them goes too far and unleashes terrifying supernatural forces.

Karla, a young medical student, is trying to cure her brother, Blake, from a terminal sleep illness called Fatal Familial Insomnia, where you are unable to sleep until you die. On her quest to treat him, a more sinister reason for his condition is revealed.

Two years into an intergalactic invasion of Earth, survivors in Sydney, Australia, fight back in a desperate ground war. As casualties mount by the day, the resistance and their unexpected allies, uncover a plot that could see the war come to a decisive end. With the Alien invaders hell-bent on making earth their new home, the race is on to save mankind.

While on a seemingly routine job, a jaded hit man discovers that he's not the only one with his target in the crosshairs.

Seventeen talented Australian directors from diverse artistic disciplines each create a chapter of the hauntingly beautiful novel by multi award-winning author Tim Winton. The linking and overlapping stories explore the extraordinary turning points in ordinary people’s lives in a stunning portrait of a small coastal community. As characters face second thoughts and regret, relationships irretrievably alter, resolves are made or broken, and lives change direction forever.

An adventure-loving couple convince their friends to explore a remote, uncharted cave system in the forests of Northern Australia. With a tropical storm approaching, they abseil into the mouth of the cave, but when the caves start to flood, tensions rise as oxygen levels fall and the friends find themselves trapped. Unknown to them, the storm has also brought in a pack of dangerous and hungry crocodiles.

1975: A 200-ton blue whale gets washed up on a local beach and the kids think it’s the biggest thing that’s ever happened in Australia. Behind closed doors, the Mums and Dads of a quiet suburban street are going to celebrate in their own special way, by joining the sexual revolution and throwing a wife-swapping key party. And like the rotting whale, it’s all about to go spectacularly wrong.

A mysterious woman is perched between the harsh legacy of World War II and the hope of a new life in Australia. A sweeping romantic drama set in 1950s rural Australia following the lives of the Blighs, a wealthy and complicated pastoralist family, who lives in Inverness, NSW.

A five-year-old Indian boy gets lost on the streets of Calcutta, thousands of kilometers from home. He survives many challenges before being adopted by a couple in Australia; 25 years later, he sets out to find his lost family.

Kye is a prisoner of war caught between two armies that he doesn't believe in. When offered an opportunity for freedom, Kye sets out on one last rescue mission only to become stranded when his ship crash lands. Kye soon realises that the deadliest creature on the desert moon is himself.

Life's gone pear-shaped for Jack Irish (Guy Pearce). He's back to takeaway Chinese for one after his girlfriend Linda (Marta Dusseldorp) abandoned him for a career in Sydney, a flashy Brisvegas type is muscling in on the racetrack action, and his cabinet-making still leaves a lot to be desired. So when an old teammate of his dad's turns up looking for help, it's a welcome distraction for Jack. Des Connors' (Ron Jacobson) son Gary (Nicholas Coghlan) has gone missing, having nicked off with all Des's money. But sometimes prodigal sons go AWOL for a reason. As Jack begins to dig he discovers Gary was a man with something to hide and a very good reason to disappear - or be disappeared. .

James Hayes is a small town police man who is called to the local cemetery in the middle of the night after six people have inexplicably risen from the dead in perfect health. With no memory of their identities, they are determined to discover who they are and what has happened to them. James recognises one of them and along with local doctor Elishia Glass, struggles to keep the case hidden from his colleagues, his family and the world. The six people are all linked in some way and the search begins for someone who knows the truth about how and why they have returned.

The story of Helen Reddy, who, in 1966, landed in New York with her three-year-old daughter, a suitcase, and $230 in her pocket. Within weeks, she was broke. Within months, she was in love. Within five years, she was one of the biggest superstars of her time and an icon of the 1970s feminist movement who wrote a song which galvanized a generation of women to fight for change.

The story of Allan "Swampy" Marsh and his Maremma dog Oddball. Swampy convinced local authorities to allow Oddball to protect a colony of Little Penguins on Middle Island from wild cats and dogs. Oddball succeeds in his campaign and becomes a front runner for Maremma dogs being used to protect other endangered Australian wildlife.

A heartbroken young man decides to walk 4000km up the coast of Western Australia naked, for charity, with the secret goal of making his ex-girlfriend jealous.

A terminally ill teen upsets her parents when she falls in love with a small-time drug dealer.

This dramatic adventure series tells the story of a group of teenagers who are separated from their families following an invasion of their country, a conflict they never saw coming.

This pulse-racing real-life adventure follows two of Australia's greatest surf legends on their quest to hunt down and ride the Pacific's biggest and most dangerous waves. With 3D cameras installed on their boards, Ross Clarke-Jones and Tom Carroll defy middle age by pushing the limits of what they — and cinema technology — can do. (TIFF)

Born with an energetic power to absorb fear from others, a young woman must find love to balance the fears of her own and fight an ever growing storm of negative energy.

Anja and five friends join anthroplogy student, Dace, on a journey to study a remote, ancient rock painting. Their excitement vanishes when Mel becomes delirious after skinny-dipping in the waterhole. Feverish, bleeding, confused, she physically and mentally regresses to a vicious predatory state. Mel has gone primal. Mel’s lover and friends realise they are the prey as she savagely hunts them down. Before they can escape another one of them starts to regress, posing a hideous choice; kill their friends or be killed by them. Their only hope of survival is through a cave, where Anja learns too late the meaning of the ancient rock art they came to study.

In the harsh, yet beautiful Australian outback lives a beast, an animal of staggering size, with a ruthless, driving need for blood and destruction. It cares for none, defends its territory with brutal force, and kills with a raw, animalistic savagery unlike any have seen before.

The story of Michelle Payne, the first female jockey to win the Melbourne Cup.

In the last days of a dying logging town, Christian returns to his family home for his father Henry’s wedding. While home, Christian reconnects with his childhood friend Oliver, who has stayed in town working at Henry’s timber mill and is now out of a job. As Christian gets to know Oliver’s wife Charlotte, daughter Hedvig, and father Walter, he discovers a secret that could tear Oliver’s family apart.

Big Mamma's Boy follows the story of Rocco as he struggles to choose between the love of his life, Katie and his doting, over-protective Italian mother. Fun, heart-wrenching and poignant, this spirited romantic comedy explores Australia's multicultural nuances with hilarious results and goes to show that being a big mamma's boy is a lot tougher than it sounds.

The Australian comedian Hannah Gadsby is taking an anti-comedy stance in her newest special.

In 1989, known as Mendax, Julian Assange and two friends formed a group called the International Subversives. Using early home computers and defining themselves as white hat hackers - those who look but don’t steal – they broke into some of the world’s most powerful and secretive organisations. In the eyes of the US Government, they were a major threat to national security.

After freeing a young Bedouin girl from her unjust imprisonment in Jerusalem, an Australian adventuress, together with her devoted police detective friend, begins to unravel a decade-old mystery concerning priceless emeralds, an ancient curse and the disappearance of the girl's mother and massacre of her tribe.

A single mother, plagued by the violent death of her husband, battles with her son's fear of a monster lurking in the house, but soon discovers a sinister presence all around her.

After breaking up with his girlfriend, Josh comes to the realization that he is homosexual. With the support of his now ex girlfriend Claire, and his best friend and house mate Tom, Josh must help his mother with her battle with depression and the rest of his family embrace his new found lifestyle.

A woman grieving over the death of her daughter loses grip of reality when she begins to think her girl may still be alive.

A remake of 'Reservoir Dogs' by Quentin Tarantino, with the noticeable difference that all the male characters have been replaced with female ones.

The world is closing in on Greta Driscoll. On the cusp of turning fifteen she can't bear to leave her childhood, it contains all the things that give her comfort in this incomprehensible new world. She floats in a bubble of loserdom with her only friend Elliott, until her parents throw her a surprise 15th birthday party and she's flung into a parallel place; a world that's weirdly erotic, a little bit violent and thoroughly ludicrous - only there can she find herself.

In 1825, Claire, a 21-year-old Irish convict, chases a British soldier through the rugged Tasmanian wilderness, bent on revenge for a terrible act of violence he committed against her family. She enlists the services of an Aboriginal tracker who is also marked by trauma from his own violence-filled past.

Mumbai, India, November 26, 2008. While several terrorists spread hatred and death through the city, others attack the Taj Mahal Palace Hotel. Both hotel staff and guests risk their lives, making unthinkable sacrifices to protect themselves and keep everyone safe while help arrives.

In the Australian Outback, two brothers discover old secrets and family lies. As their friends start to go missing they fear they are being stalked by someone or something from their worst nightmares - But is it just - A story? A legend? A hoax? Or is it real?

In the 70s two brothers battle killer waves, conservative society and ruthless bikers to kick-start the modern surf industry.

A widowed reporter recruits the help of a federal agent to investigate her late husband's secrets, but the two become the target of unknown attackers. When FBI Agent John Nelson’s key informant, Miles, is abducted and shot, all that’s left is a severed finger. In order to find a new lead, Nelson travels to New York City to inform widowed magazine reporter Rebecca Scott that her long dead husband, Miles, had only recently been murdered to see if she had heard from him in recent years. Perplexed, Scott joins Agent Nelson in the wealthy enclave of Australia’s Gold Coast to find out what really happened. The two soon discover Miles may have been part of an elaborate “Ponzi scheme” to bilk investors, and a vengeful billionaire, out of millions of dollars. As more layers of Miles’ secret life are exposed, can the two stay ahead of the mysterious attackers who will stop at nothing to halt their investigation?

An indigenous detective returns to the Outback to investigate the murder of a young girl.

A mostly true account of future Hollywood star Errol Flynn's sea adventures in the early thirties, sailing from Australia to Papua in search of gold, along with his best friend Rex, a former Canadian smuggler; Dook, a handy English gentleman; and Charlie, a grumpy old sailor.

A group of elite soldiers sent to infiltrate and extract the lead science team from Pine Gap, Australia's top secret underground military compound, after it comes under attack from unknown forces. The mission is compromised when they encounter a young woman with no memory of who she is or how she came to be there. As they try to escape, the group quickly discovers all is not as it seems and the facility has become a testing ground for something far more sinister.

When a pop-star cousin comes to stay, a family's once normal life changes drastically.

Laura and Tyler are best friends and drinking buddies whose hedonistic existence falls under the creeping horror of adulthood when Laura gets engaged to Jim – an ambitious pianist who surprisingly decides to go teetotal.

A comedy about a groom and his three best men who travel to the Australian outback for a wedding.

Ellie Linton, a teen from an Australian coastal town, leads her friends on an excursion to a camp deep in the woods, dubbed "Hell." Upon their return, the youths find that their town has been overrun by an enemy army, and their friends and family have been imprisoned. When the hostile invaders become alerted to their presence, Ellie and her friends band together to escape -- and strike back against -- this mysterious enemy.

In 1943, five US soldiers are recruited by the OSS for a time travel mission to save the world from the tyranny of Hitler's 25th Reich.

Aaron Falk returns to his drought-stricken hometown to attend a tragic funeral. But his return opens a decades-old wound - the unsolved death of a teenage girl.

A lighthouse keeper and his wife living off the coast of Western Australia raise a baby they rescue from an adrift rowboat.

American high school sweethearts, Wade and Lisa, travel to Australia to experience nature at its finest. As their relationship strains, they head inland to Uluru, navigating remote dirt roads with an unreliable GPS. Soon, they find themselves stranded and ill- prepared and, with only each other to rely on, the two are driven to extremes in order to stay alive in the harsh and unforgiving Outback.

In 1919, Australian farmer Joshua Connor travels to Turkey to discover the fate of his three sons, reported missing in action. Holding on to hope, Joshua must travel across the war-torn landscape to find the truth and his own peace.

A great white shark hunts the crew of a capsized sailboat along the Great Barrier Reef.