Rashaad Newsome’s feature-length documentary Assembly will make its Australian premiere at the Sydney Film Festival on June 12th and 15th, 2025!

The 72nd Sydney Film Festival has unveiled its full 2025 lineup, featuring 201 films from 70 countries—including the Australian premiere of Assembly, directed and produced by Rashaad Newsome and Johnny Symons.
At the heart of Assembly is Newsome’s most ambitious exhibition to date, originally staged at New York’s iconic Park Avenue Armory. The film offers a behind-the-scenes look at the monumental creative journey—from choreographing with international dancers who merge voguing with traditional movement, to a spiritual pilgrimage to Ghana to commune with ancestors. The result is an immersive Black queer utopia that brings together poets, musicians, dancers, and the exhibition’s striking centerpiece: a 30-foot-tall non-binary AI named Being.
Merging documentary, performance, art, and activism, Assembly defies easy categorization. It is a joyful, defiant tribute to Black trans women and to voguing as a global art form—an electrifying vision of liberation, collaboration, and radical imagination.