BOFA 2020 was Australia’s first online – and FREE – film festival. In 2021 we are again free and online. We are streaming 18 stunning films from 12 countries as far away as Cuba and Kurdistan to right here in Australia. and they are all different to our in-cinema program.

So, if the sofa is your thing, jump on to our FREE online BOFA (3 –30 May). All subscribers to the BOFA newsletter are sent the free access code to the online film festival just before the festival goes live on the early morning of Monday 3 May. Join now.

That means you have the best of both worlds so why not enjoy both!

Online BOFA 2020 was a hit with our audience around Tasmania and now the BOFA audience extends across Australia with almost 50% of our total audience from the other states than Tasmania. Some comments:

” A huge thanks to you  for bringing to us  the opportunity to watch such powerful films on line. ”

” BOFA opened up the world when everything else seemed to be closing in. Open at all hours, it allowed you to choose what suited at any time on any day. Thanks for the insights into so many other lives and worlds., adversity, resilience, beauty, compassion, humanity, diversity.”

CLIMBING BLIND

“I have a genetic condition that affects my eyes.” As an understatement, this is up there with the best; Jesse Dufton was born with very limited vision, and things have gone downhill since then.

PHOTOGRAPH

Have you ever told a white lie? Street photographer, Rafi, (Nawazuddin Siddiqui) pretends he has a fiancée to keep his grandmother from fretting about his marriage prospects.

LOS HERMANOS/THE BROTHERS

Two amazing child prodigies, both recognised for their talent. Two brothers, pulled apart by the Cold War, and set on different life paths.

STORIES OF TASMANIA

Short film makers who live in Tasmania, those who wish they lived here and those who wish they’d never left were challenged to tell us their favourite Stories of Tasmania. Why not vote for YOUR top picks!

JEZ: A LETTER FOR LIFE

When a young politician is told he has incurable cancer, he decides to make a film for his newborn children Grace and Michael who will never fully know their father.

BLACK MAN’S HOUSES

Set on stark and beautiful Flinders Island, this film looks at changing social attitudes; and the context of Australia’s shameful colonial past.

ROSIE

Sometimes described as a film about homelessness, this is more a film about the fragility of life and resilience, seen through the eyes of an ordinary Dublin family.

FREEDOM STORIES

This is a film about a real estate agent, a mechanic, an aspiring truck driver, a tiler and more. But they have one thing in common – they all sought refuge in Australia.

THE OLIVE TREE

In many Spanish villages, the most important historical artefact is not the church, or the town hall, or the Roman ruins. It is the thousand-plus year-old village olive tree.

THE BOYS WHO SAID NO

Slickly edited archive footage and live interviews from activists like Joan Baez trace the birth and spread of the 1960’s Vietnam War draft objection movement.

MY SWEET PEPPERLAND

A cross between a western thriller and a quirky social commentary, My Sweet Pepper Land (the name of a bizarre cowboy bar in Northern Kurdistan)

JAILBREAK PACT (PACTO DE FUGA)

In 2002, Chilean film maker David Albala was hit by a car. He survived, and went on to make the definitive film about the end of the Pinochet regime.

CHARLATAN

This film weaves together a complex bundle of emotional threads, and presents them to the viewer through the tiny, dark, and powerfully focused camera lens of director Agnieszka Holland.

HOPE

Here’s a great plot: famous dancer gets a terminal cancer diagnosis, her lifetime partner is distraught, the family is thrown into chaos. This film pulls no punches as a stable world spins into delirium.

CRESCENDO

This highly awarded film is about hope, about the transformative power of music, and about the courage of young people who want to make a real difference.

FINDING VIVIAN MAIER

In 2007, flea-market hunter John Maloof snapped up a box of old photos for $380. It turned out to be the tip of a 100,000 strong archive of possibly some of the most accomplished street images ever.

THE ART OF INCARCERATION

Aboriginal people in prison are not all “drug addicts, alcoholics, crooks and bad people.” Many of them are talented artists, some with successful global careers.

MAKING A MOUNTAIN

The Danes have a reputation for being clean, neat and correct. In this film,  architect Bjarke Ingels shows they are also capable of combining those traits with some seriously whacky ideas.