Four documentaries of defiance and protest that take us to the frontlines of activism today and face-to-face with the people fighting – and dancing – for their cause. The two fiction films here galvanise with their own brand of headstrong storytelling about fighting the establishment, a classic cinematic narrative if ever there was one.
Festival Programme
Films — by Collection
- Aotearoa
- Becoming
- Belonging
- Breaking Through
- Encounters
- Incredibly Strange
- Indigenous Voices
- Mobilise
- Political States
- Portraits
- Proud
- Radical Empathy
- Square Eyes
- Visions
- – Animation –
- – EUROPE! Voices of Women in Film –
- – East & South East Asian –
- – Latin American –
- – Literary Connections –
- – Masterclasses –
- – Middle Eastern –
- – Out of the Past –
- – Shorts –
Mobilise
Coded Bias
“Algorithmic justice” is one of the most important civil rights issues today, says computer scientist and digital activist Joy Buolamwini, in this accessible and compelling documentary about artificial intelligence and the biased algorithms that power it.
Dark City Beneath the Beat
The untold story of Baltimore club music is brought to ecstatic life against the backdrop of the city’s depression, and through the black and LGBTQI+ communities galvanised by musical expression, in TT the Artist’s bristling documentary.
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Hong Kong Moments
Vivid and strikingly objective, Zhou Bing’s in-the-field documentary covering both sides of Hong Kong’s pro-democracy Umbrella Movement examines the personal and political identities at odds in this ongoing conflict.
The County
Héraðið
We close the Festival with this quintessentially Icelandic comedy about one woman’s fight against a monopolistic co-op stifling the livelihoods of farmers in a remote valley near Reykjavik. Adroitly blending humour and injustice together with the lightest of touches, it’s a worthy successor to NZIFF18 audience favourite Woman at War.
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True History of the Kelly Gang
From Sir Sydney Nolan’s epic paintings to Peter Carey’s Booker Prize-winning novel, Ned Kelly has come a long way to find himself thundering on horseback across a barren moonlit landscape, dressed only in boots and a flowing lace frock, in this dazzling postmodern version of the outlaw legend.
Vivos
The great Ai Weiwei, giant of contemporary Chinese, activist and human rights art, directs with breathtaking outrage this soul-searching documentary on the devastation of a Mexican community gutted by a mass abduction of students.