Yesterday Island

In this award-winning Australian indie comedy, an unsuccessful writer, stuck living the same day on repeat on a subantarctic island, must find another unwitting victim to take his place.

Amos, a failed novelist with a failed marriage, arrives on a remote southern island in full midlife-crisis mode. But his escape soon becomes a prison: he discovers he’s trapped infinitely reliving the same day, complete with the same dead birds, weird board games, tinned spaghetti and unexplained murders. The only way to get off this hamster wheel is to trick someone else into replacing you, and Amos’s estranged ex-wife, Gemma, seems like the perfect candidate – but her arrival complicates things, and Amos is forced to confront his past.

Having landed a veritable alphabet of international film festival prizes – an Audience Award at Austin, Critics’ Prize at Brussels and Best Feature at Cleveland – Yesterday Island is a true crowdpleaser, a small-budget but exceptionally shot achievement in inventive worldbuilding. It also functions as a blackly funny parable about moral responsibility, evoking Greek myth to put its own unique spin on classic time-loop films like Groundhog Day, Palm Springs and One More Shot (MIFF 2025). Boosted by a game cast including acclaimed stand-up Ivan Aristeguieta, up-and-coming comic performer Florence Noble, and veteran character actors David Fane (Eagle vs Shark, MIFF 2007) and Francis Greenslade, Yesterday Island is a film you’ll want to revisit over and over again.

Content: Melbourne International Film Festival