Torrential rain, lightning strikes and pounding thunder put a dampener on a Tropfest that tried its best to weather one of the most dramatic evenings in its history.

At one stage, the site had to be evacuated "due to extreme weather conditions".

Hundreds piled into tents as lightning struck down around them.

"Move away from all metal objects, do not stand next to the sides of the tent, we are about to get hit by lightning," a security official warned as hundred of spectators scurried away.

"It is like they are doomed by the weather," remarked Tropfest judge and retiring At the Movies host Margaret Pomeranz.

It was a storm from which the crowd could never recover.

Just after 6pm, the organisers announced the storm had passed and the festival was back on, but the damage had been done. Only a few hundred remained as the first film screened and sun poked its shy head through the clouds.

"I am just disappointed for the film makers," said Tropfest managing director, Michael Laverty, who added that last year's full-house saw 95,000 spectators stream through the gates of Centennial Park.

"We can control everything else, but we cannot control an electrical storm. We moved from the wettest month [February] of the year to avoid this."

The weather overshadowed a festival that was lighter on comedy and heavier on drama than in previous years.

From the funny to the tragic, the line up drew laughs and contemplation from the film lovers who were prepared to stick it out beyond the claps of thunder.

Chocolate lovers found solace in Jacobie Gray's Cavity, the Bondi Hipsters met a match for their stereotypes in Little Bondi and Millie Rose Heywood told the tragic and courageous tale Spirit Stones, about the last fluent speaker of the Dharug language, the native tongue of Sydney's Eora Aboriginal people.

"It rained the whole time we shot, so it was poetic," said Heywood.

Pomeranz said her only criteria was that she wanted to be both "amused and moved by big ideas with small budgets".

This year's winner of Tropfest provided it in spades. If laughs were quantifiable then Granny Smith, directed by Julian Lucas, 27, would have won the award by a mile.

"I've got to go to some lady's funeral and pretend I am her grandson," is how Lucas summed up the hilariously painful narrative.

For a man who was "about to cry at 6pm", the evening turned up trumps. He is now off to Los Angeles to discuss future ideas with executives.

You could not wipe the smile off some of the festival's more juniors members either, none more so than 15-year-old Jobe Adams, who won second place in Tropfest Jnr and a Qantas cadetship.

"I wanted more rain," he said as he walked the sopping red carpet. "We've only got droughts where we are from."

To get to the festival Jobe made the 20-hour trip from Wooribinda in north Queensland with 11 of his classmates in a bus that he borrowed from his local hospital.

The group raised money for the film Bulloo through barbeques, raffles and with the help of the Red Cross.

"I'm just happy to be here," he said.

Despite the cheer of the film makers, those that had laid out their picnic rugs and poured their gin and tonics, only to be told to evacuate earlier in the afternoon, could not help but be disappointed.

"I just wanted a cosy night of watching some Aussie cinema," said 30-year-old Anders Larssen.

It is not the first time that festival has been caught in a downpour.

Plagued by wet weather during its traditional date in February, Tropfest founder John Polson decided to switch the date to December.

"If you look it up, statistically Sydney has almost double the rainfall in February than it has in December," he said confidently in 2013.

Sadly, this year's theme, "mirror", could not have been more ironic, evoking memories of 2006, the last time the festival was cancelled due to a torrential downpour.

Tropfest 2012 was so unpleasant for everyone involved that it forced the hand of the organisers.

A date change and sunshine would come, they said, but it was not to be. Nothing could save the Centennial Parklands from the storm cells that have swept across NSW over the past few days.

Festival Manager, Grace McBride, said she was drawing a line in the mud.

"We're breaking up with the rain, leave us alone," she said.

Managing director Michael Laverty said there were no plans to change the date [again] or to move the event inside.

"That wouldn't be the same, it wouldn't be Australian."

While crowds in Sydney may have felt the brunt of the weather, Tropfest is no longer Sydney's alone.

An estimated 20,000 watched in Canberra, likewise in Perth, Hobart, Melbourne and Surfers Paradise.

Hundreds of thousands more watched it cosy and dry in their own homes on SBS 2.

Next year, it will be back. Same date and same time, said Laverty.

"We will fill it again," he said.