Cover Image: People gathering among iconic Somerville Auditorium pines as the outdoor cinema fills up. Photo: Supplied.

A night watching a movie at the Somerville Auditorium has for decades been an iconic Perth summertime activity.

Every week for four months thousands flock to the grounds of the University of Western Australia to sit under the stars and surrounded by Norfolk pines to watch films from across the globe and in a range of genres, from frothy French comedies to wrenching dramas from the world’s most troubled regions.

Despite the loveliness of the setting and the always-interesting line-up I have to admit that over the years I’ve been reluctant to go to the Somerville, preferring to wait for the films to move across to the indoor arthouse locations or wait until they arrive on streaming.

Quite simply, the venue was pretty but the cinema experience was not up to scratch. You could see through to pines in the background, the sound system was inferior and those legendary deck chairs made for contortionists, not for the mostly boomer army who struggle to pick up their grandkids let alone arise from a canvas sinkhole.

However, this year I ventured to Somerville for the first time in ages because this year’s program is eye-popping, with Film and XR Curator Madeline Bates securing the strongest line-up of movies in memory, if ever. 

Kicking off with Nouvelle Vague, Richard Linklater’s hugely enjoyable recreation of Jean-Luc Godard’s influential class Breathless, the 2025-2026 season has been one great contemporary classic after another: American Kelly Reichhardt’s 1970s-set heist thriller The Mastermind, Norwegian Joachim Trier’s mesmerising, moving family drama Sentimental Value, Brazilian Gabriel Mascaro’s hypnotic futuristic adventure The Blue Trail, Iranian master Jafar Panahi justly celebrated It Was Just An Accident and, also from Brazil, Kleber Mendonca Filho’ astonishing mid-70s political epic The Secret Agent, with a final 40 minutes as artfully thrilling as anything by Quentin Tarantino.

And coming up is yet another Oscar contender Sirat, French director Oliver Laxe’s extraordinary tale of a father who goes searching for his daughter who goes missing during a rave in Morocco, and The Voice of Hind Rajab, the true story of a Palestinian child trapped in a car in Gaza that is under attack from the Israeli military which earned an unprecedented 23-minute-standing ovation at the Venice Film Festival.

But it hasn’t been the astonishments on the screen that has swayed me toward Somerville: the screening conditions are now first rate, with an excellent screen and projection, much-improved deckchairs, the food and beverage offerings pleasing and the gardens really attractive. It’s the closest thing I’ve seen to an outdoor living room.

“The venue is managed by the University of Western Australia, which has done a wonderful job of upgrading and maintaining it. I agree with you,” says Bates. “It’s a beautiful venue. It’s as good as anywhere in the world.”

When I press Bates on how she has managed to secure so many of the movies in year-end best-of lists and award-season contenders she suggests that non-English language films are now dominating because of the demise of non-commercial filmmaking in the United States.

“Europe and other territories have much better state funding for filmmaking than the United States, so they are able to make the kinds of bigger budget art movies that are out of reach of their American counterparts,” explains Bates.

“And this has become more evident in the age of streaming, which has weakened the middle-ground of movie-making, the space the more interesting movies have come from. You only have to look at a film like Sentimental Value to see how it satisfies the yearning for a powerful family drama in the tradition of Ingmar Bergman,” says Bates.

“And many of these non-English fans are winning large audiences by subverting mainstream American movies. So they give you all the entertainment value of American-style storytelling but taking it somewhere more interesting and specific to their world. The Secret Agent from Brazil does this superbly.

“The film industry is becoming more globalised, which is why non-English-language movies feel more engaging. There is a growing co-production culture that is enabling filmmakers from different parts of the world to meet and to work together,” argues Bates.

The rise in interest in this new brand of globalised art movie has benefited Perth Festival because their four-month season over the summer months straddles award season in the United States and the United Kingdom.

“We are benefitting from the huge amount of publicity these films are getting during award season. But there are also lots of great films outside of our program. We are spoiled for choice this year,” says Bates.

Perth Festival’s film season (aka Lotterywest Films) is not a film festival in the traditional sense, which packs in hundreds of movies in a short amount of time. It is geared more toward the leisurely pace of Perth, where lifestyle trumps the completist urge of big-city dwellers.

Included in this line-up is Birthright, Zoe Pepper’s Perth-made black comedy about a financially stressed young couple who move back in with the husband’s boomer parents and challenge them about their privilege.

“It’s an exciting change to our program,” says Bates. “Our audiences are still strong, even at a time when cinema-going is under threat, but it is great to challenge them not just with the films but how they are presented. It is wonderful that our audience still appreciates and understands the joy and beauty of watching films on a big screen and with other people.”

Lotterywest Films is on until March 29.