But two months after Tropfest was cancelled when founder John Polson discovered a debt "well into six figures", the famous short film festival returns to Centennial Park on Sunday.

That is a great relief to the filmmakers behind the 16 short films that will screen. It looked as though they had lost the chance to join the directors whose careers were launched at Tropfest.

"It's awesome," said Mark Nichols, an actor-director who has made Tropfest for the first time with Identical. "Having a 100,000 people hopefully laughing at your jokes is the biggest thing I'm looking forward to."

His film is a mockumentary about identical twins, which he has written, directed and starred in it with his own identical twin, actor-comedian Brett.

"It's about the slightly weird twins you see who embrace everything about twinism - they wear the same clothes, have the same food, sometimes marry identical wives and drive the same cars - which we're not," he said.

After two months of frantic organising, all the sponsors of the cancelled festival have returned - the NSW government through Destination NSW and Screen NSW, Qantas, Nikon, Screen Australia and Nova 96.9 - with new backing from CGU Insurance.

It only remains to be seen whether the audience in the park comes back, the rain stays away and viewers watch the broadcast on SBS 2.

But the dispute between Polson and management company Tropfest Festival Productions remains unresolved.

Polson said it had been a "very, very painful" time dealing with the financial fall-out while working on giving the festival a new future which he called Tropfest 2.0.

"Behind the scenes, I've been trying to ensure the money that sponsors gave that was supposed to go towards the December event can go towards the February event," he said.

"It's a miracle we're on on Sunday. The chances of it happening were about one in 1000."

Also screening are documentaries of seminal punk band Radio Birdman (John Meredith's Into The Maelstrom) and a former world champion boxer (Andrew Kennedy and Tim Chatfield's Jeff Harding) and a comedy about secret Taylor Swift fans (Angela McCormack's Tay Man).

There is also a drama about a man who wakes up in a coffin (Lincoln Hall's Why Would I Lie?), an animation about a man and his dog (Nick Baker and Tristan Klein's Postcards to Ulay) and a thriller about a lonely zombie who craves company (Benjamin O'Donnell's Wish You Here).

The films will be judged by Mel Gibson, Simon Baker, Rebecca Gibney, director Jocelyn Moorhouse and cinematographer Don McAlpine, with the winner receiving $10,000 cash plus a trip to Los Angeles to meet industry executives and other prizes.

The Nichols brothers have identical hopes that Tropfest continues beyond this Sunday.

"This could be the make or break year I guess," said Mark.

"It would be so sad to see it go. It's just such an integral part of this time of the year in Sydney," said Brett.