A documentary tribute to one of the nation’s best loved songwriters, charting Don McGlashan’s storied career from arty punk upstart to one of the strongest voices in the national identity of Aotearoa.
Festival Programme
Films — by Country
Aotearoa New Zealand

GRACE A Prayer For Peace
A portrait of one of Aotearoa’s greatest living artists by one of our greatest documentary filmmakers. You should expect something special, and that’s what you get.

Life in One Chord
Punk renegade Shayne Carter (Straitjacket Fits, Dimmer) takes us on an iconoclastic tour through a career of highs and lows from suburban Dunedin to the heights of international fame and back again.

Ngā Whanaunga: Aotearoa New Zealand's Best 2025 Highlights
A highlight selection of the best short films from Ngā Whanaunga: Aotearoa New Zealand's Best 2025, including all award winners, will screen in the regions.
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Notes from a Fish
An aspiring novelist finds inspiration gurgling down the drain when his unconventional muse, a tropical fish, goes missing in this darkly absurd romp through the mean-ish streets of Auckland’s inner suburbs.

Prime Minister
The uncharted highs and crashing lows of Jacinda Ardern’s time at the helm of Aotearoa get their due in an intimate-access international documentary about state power and human vulnerability.

TOITŪ Visual Sovereignty
Unprecedented insight into the curation of the Toi Tū Toi Ora: Contemporary Māori Art exhibition reveals the struggle for Māori artistic sovereignty within the structures of Aotearoa New Zealand’s cultural institutions.

War Stories Our Mothers Never Told Us
Seven women reflect on the emotional cataclysm of World War II in Dame Gaylene Preston’s landmark contribution to the collective memory of Aotearoa, which has lost none of its raw power on its 30th anniversary.

The Weed Eaters
Cannibalism, murder and betrayal are on the table in this riotous NZ horror comedy. Four holidaying friends come across a strain of weed that gives them the most extreme case of the munchies ever recorded.

Went Up the Hill
An unsettling, sinister slow-burn thriller, Samuel Van Grinsven unites rising star Dacre Montgomery with Phantom Thread’s Vicky Krieps and New Zealand’s own Sarah Peirse for a supernatural chiller like no other.

Workmates
Sophie Henderson and Curtis Vowell draw on real-life experiences for this delightful and nuanced romantic dramedy throwing a welcome spotlight on the legendary theatre spaces of Tāmaki Makaurau.