Massey University National Academy of Screen Arts Cinema

A gently funny exploration of family, faith and the tensions between Thailand’s spiritual and modernist dimensions.

Set against Tokyo’s quiet winter glow, a reserved proofreader finds an unexpected bond with a physics teacher in a delicate drama exploring isolation, desire, and the risks of emotional connection.

A groundbreaking documentary reexamines a decades-old film about the first contact made with the Korubo tribe in Brazil and the “white man’s gaze”.

In the cold and conformist world of Japanese retail, convenience store clerk Sakai slowly awakens to the horrors of the system just as his orderly world of cheap consumerism begins to unravel with brutal consequences.

Winning awards at Sundance and the Berlinale, this vibrant, vital portrait of lesbian experimental filmmaker Barbara Hammer explores her radical life, work and legacy.

Raised in 1980s Russell by Merry, an artist whose life became local folklore, filmmaker Gwen Isaac returns to her Far North hometown to untangle fact from family legend and confront the inheritance she carries into her own motherhood.

Winning the Camera D’or for best debut at Cannes, this powerful drama wrestles with truth, justice and forgiveness during community-based reconciliation proceedings eighteen years after the horrors of Rwanda’s 1994 genocide.

Palestinian-Syrian  director Abdallah Alkhatib’s Berlin Film Festival winner is an absurdist, inventive tapestry of tales from a besieged city, where the desires of its citizens become sparks of resistance against oblivion.

A vanished man, a lawless frontier, and a woman who refuses to look away: Valeska Grisebach turns the margins of Europe into an epic of startling richness.

A missing daughter. A forbidden love. A community the world has never seen on screen – until now.

Told through two siblings’ contrasting viewpoints, this moving drama considers the fallout of a bitter breakup as childhood certainty fades and familial bonds are put to the test.

A shape-shifting movie, exploring loneliness and desire among truck drivers, Pierre Le Gall's acclaimed debut Flesh and Fuel may prove the most unexpectedly romantic film you will see this year.

A stunning debut from Maxence Voiseux, ten years in the making, Gabin follows a young boy into adulthood, crafting a tender and deeply affecting portrait of life in rural France.

Indonesian genre maestro Joko Anwar returns with a wild mashup of martial arts, horror and comedy, set inside a corrupt prison system, where an evil entity is literally turning prisoners inside out.

A surreal and heartfelt portrait of a young boy caught between his own burgeoning artistic identity and his father's rigid expectations of masculinity, told with visual flair and deep empathy. 

In this dark and absurd found footage mockumentary, Morris Fubbins ventures deep into the New Zealand bush in search of his missing father, who he believes was kidnapped by a mythical creature.

A stunning directorial debut that was a big winner at Cannes – a coming of age story set at the foot of Mount Vesuvius that announces the arrival of a major new talent of French cinema.

The arrival of a free-spirited stray dog transforms a lonely woman's life, exposing deeply held wounds and a longing for connection that is buried beneath the surface of her stoic exterior.

Using non-professional child actors, Japanese director Akio Fujimoto offers an unflinching portrayal of the Rohingya crisis and the struggles of refugees without a nation to call their own.

The 1988 hit single Sweet Lovers made Fonotī Pati Umaga a star, but a devastating fall in 2005 reshaped his life and purpose.

With his trademark sensitivity, Koji Fukada turns a delicate story of friendship into a moving meditation on resilience, freedom, and the courage to embrace change.

Winning awards in Berlinale's Generation section, this sensitive debut feature honours the power of female teenage friendship in the aftermath of a sexual assault at a New Year’s Eve party.

Kurosawa Kiyoshi’s exquisitely crafted samurai murder mystery finds a Lord and his captured prisoner work together to solve a series of shadowy murders inside the palace compound as civil war rages around them. An elegant and probing portrait of power, violence and honour, which world premiered at this year’s Cannes Film Festival.

Guillermo Galoe’s feature adaptation of his own award-winning short film is a vivid depiction of the maligned, frequently misrepresented Roma shanty-towns on the fringes of Madrid.

In this film seeped in sunshine with rhythmic hints of fleeting childhood fantasy, Jaume Claret Muxart's debut is a sensitive, poetic and intuitive exploration of adolescent awakening.

As irresistible as it is offbeat, Sarah Arnold's Europa Cinemas Label-winning debut pits farmers against hunters in a fiercely entertaining thriller bursting with humour, suspense and surprises.

Mystery swirls around Hein's return to his native island – is it really him? The villagers hold a trial, while director Kai Stänicke builds a Dogville-like set to stage a tense tale of empowerment.

Set against the backdrop of a Kiwi summer, Uncle is a tender and deeply human story about caregiving, connection and the people who show up when they're needed most.

Inspiring a new generation of filmmakers

School bullying and adolescent identity crises are in the spotlight in Kohei Kadowaki’s extraordinary anime feature, We Are Aliens, direct from this year’s Cannes Director’s Fortnight.

The poetry in the everyday abounds in this novelistic drama set in modern Singapore, chronicling the daily lives of a father and son and their parallel romantic relationships.

In rediscovered 2001 camcorder footage, acclaimed Palestinian director Kamal Aljafari goes in search of a man he once met when they were prisoners, in a heartfelt tribute to the lost of Gaza, and the life that persists.

Three youths head into the punishing Australian desert to escape menacing outlaws on their trail in Warwick Thornton’s tough and uncompromising western-thriller.

A truck in flames, a woman gone, and two sisters left to pay the price... Shot without a script using a real Bedouin family in Lebanon's Bekaa Valley, this lyrical debut is a film about what women must sacrifice to survive.