Between documenting reality and dramatising history, these cogent narratives grapple with degrees of political ambition and turmoil in regions with long, chequered pasts. In each situation, be it democracy in action or a dictatorship rising from the ashes, the parallels to our current world political climate are devastatingly clear.
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 –
Political States
Mayor
By turns comedic and Kafkaesque, this fly-on-the-wall doco observes the fortunes of Ramallah, an epicentre of Palestinian commerce and culture, and its tireless mayor, whose work to better the city is met with danger and frustration.
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State Funeral
Compiling rare found-footage into an unnerving visual essay on Stalin’s cult of personality, this disquieting film observes the notorious Soviet leader’s 1953 funeral procession – and with it, the end spectacle of a tyrannical regime.
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The Kingmaker
Lauren Greenfield (The Queen of Versailles, NZIFF12) harnesses extraordinary access and the boastful, unrepentant nature of her subject, Imelda Marcos, in this unsettling chronicle of ill-gotten wealth and political corruption.
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While at War
Mientras dure la guerra
The acclaimed director of The Sea Inside returns with his most handsomely mounted film yet, an expansive yet deep-focus drama detailing events around the Spanish Civil War and the rise of Franco’s fascist dictatorship.