Aotearoa New Zealand

Selected by kids for kids, our annual panorama of the world’s best animated shorts for the Festival’s youngest audience (we suggest 3–7 this year) has plenty to offer their grown-up escort parties.

Narrowed down from an amazing 2000+ entries, this year’s survey of the best in animated short films covers the gamut from sumptuous painterly Russian styles to the most inventive and expressive CGI, including NZ-made Poppy.

Graeme Tuckett’s lavishly illustrated documentary-cum-tribute reviews the groundbreaking achievements of Barry Barclay and is constructed around a long revealing interview with the filmmaker.

Wellington’s progressive New Dance Group (1945-47) is remembered in reconstructed dance and a generous quantity of archival performance footage in this charming doco by Shirley Horrocks.

FPS is Auckland’s annual showcase for exhilarating experiments in Expanded Cinema, a premier merging point for film art, live music/sound art, performance and the exploration of cinema – this year Super 8 – as a live event.

MIC Toi Rerehiko presents the best new NZ short films selected by a panel of industry experts. This eclectic short film programme brings together the cream of Kiwi animators and innovators.

MIC Toi Rerehiko presents the best new NZ short films selected by a panel of industry experts. It’s a bumper year with two of these six, The Six Dollar Fifty Man and Lars and Peter, also selected for competition at Cannes.

MIC Toi Rerehiko presents the best new NZ short films selected by a panel of industry experts. This years’ crop of short dramas testifies to the diversity and invention of Aotearoa’s finest up-and-coming filmmakers.

Film noir meets bloody backwoods whodunit in this new digi-thriller from writer/director James Napier-Robertson. With Gareth Reeves, Cameron Rhodes, Ian Mune, Renato Bartolomei, Tom Hern. World Premiere.

Florian Habicht describes his funny, affectionate film about the annual Ninety Mile Beach Red Snapper Classic fishing competition as a ‘sequel of sorts’ to his classic Kaikohe Demolition.

Roger Horrocks introduces Art That Moves, his new film about New Zealand’s favourite 20th-century expatriate artist and filmmaker, and presents a cornucopia of rarities and recent restorations.

Compact perceptive portrait of one-of-a-kind self-made man Rob Moodie, most recently famous for appearing in court dressed as Alice in Wonderland to protest against male-dominated corruption in the New Zealand judiciary.

Luit Bieringa’s lovely portrait of Wellington art dealer Peter McLeavey intersperses a lyrical picture of McLeavey’s Wellington with Sam Neill’s readings from his correspondence, and frank conversations with the man himself.

Classic NZ documentary. “A chillingly prescient study of the erosion of plant genetic diversity in the Third World by seed companies working for First-World profit.” — Peter Calder, NZ Herald

Big business and a small, struggling rural support town are on a collision course in this good natured comedy made on a shoestring budget with extensive community goodwill.

New Zealand premiere screenings of the feature debut by Armagan Ballantyne from an original screenplay by Briar Grace-Smith. Already a popular and critical success at the Rotterdam and Berlin Film Festivals.

Wellington-raised, Paris-based saxophonist Lucien Johnson, a band of local avant-garde virtuosos and veteran Kiwi filmmaker Geoff Murphy (Utu) collaborate on an exuberantly macabre musical tribute to Edgar Allen Poe.

NZ documentary classics. The Spirits and the Times Will Teach focuses on the reminiscences of two kuia, Ngākahikatea Wirihana and Herepo Rongo. Waikato explores the support of the Waikato people for the King movement.

NZ documentary classics. The Prophets concerns the Tūhoe of the Urewera country and the Ringatū religion. The Great Trees talks about leadership and education. Sir Āpirana Ngata is remembered.

NZ documentary classics. Tūrangawaewae focuses on the establishment of a new urban marae in Porirua. The Carving Cries explores the importance of passing on shared memories, knowledge and history to the next generation.

World premiere screenings of captivating, ravishing doco about a charismatic East Coast couple raising their six children to respect nature and survive in the wild.

Classic 70s TV documentaries made in the Hokianga by Barry Barclay explore the legend of ‘Opo the friendly dolphin’ and an old woman’s memories of pioneering life and the niceties of civilised life.