Forget snowflakes and eggnog. New Zealand’s first homegrown festive movie, Kiwi Christmas, tells what happens when Santa does a runner downunder just a week before Christmas.
Produced by Otago’s double Bafta award winner, Tim Sanders, the film sees Santa — fed up with the materialism of Christmas — head to New Zealand for a summer holiday. When his rocket-powered sleigh crashes in the sea off a popular holiday beach, he is found washed up by two siblings and their newly-separated parents, Sanders says.
The children soon figure out who Santa is and try to get him back to the North Pole in time for Christmas. But before that can happen, he experiences the "full range of summer time activities", from swimming and biscuiting to a barbecue and backyard cricket.
Christmas films may have taken a darker, more cynical turn in recent years but Sanders says Kiwi Christmas is unashamedly family-orientated.
The lead role is taken by veteran Finnish actor Kari Vaananen, who lives near the North Pole in a place considered by Finns to be the official home of Santa.
"We thought having an actor who might be recognised as a local, playing Santa, might break the spell and that having someone with an accent who genuinely comes from that part of the world, would give an edge to the character. And it really did pay off."
Also starring Sia Trokenheim, Xavier Horan and child actors Samuel Clark and Luca Andrews, the film is the brainchild of director Tony Simpson, who wanted to make a film that reminded people of the simple joys of the festive season.
"We don’t want to hammer too many messages," Sanders says, "but I think a lot of people would agree the Christmas season has turned into a retail extravaganza and that some of the original spirit of what it meant might have faded with time."
However, this reflection on materialism is not really a condemnation, more of an observation: "The real message [in the movie] is the importance of family, the importance of love between each other and the importance of working together."
The film has been sold to Australia and the backers are hopeful of interest from Europe and the UK. But Sanders says Disney-Pixar titles and blockbusters such as the second film in the Star Wars sequel trilogy are all opening in the holidays so Kiwi Christmas is being released slightly earlier on November 30.
"You can’t release a Christmas movie at any time other than Christmas and we’ve got huge competition against us. So we’re a bit like the little guy in the corner trying to punch his way to the top."
Sanders and Simpson earlier worked together on Kiwi Flyer, a film about a 12-year-old boy’s efforts to win Nelson’s annual trolley derby. After it’s release in 2012 they began talking about a Christmas movie, but it took four years to finance and develop it. Fittingly, they got the green light on Christmas Eve last year.
It was shot over eight weeks earlier this year at a camping ground they established just north of Auckland.
"We were filming in summer time but three tropical storms came through one after the other and one just about wiped out the entire camping ground. We had to work our way around thunder clouds, rain storms and torrential downpours and still come out with a product that looked like it was a bright sunny day."
Raised in Adelaide, Sanders moved to New Zealand in the mid 1980s after working on the adventure film, Race for the Yankee Zephyr, in Queenstown. He now divides his time between Wanaka and Dunedin.
The 64-year-old produced three of New Zealand’s most well-known films — The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, The Frighteners, and Whale Rider — but says at this stage of his career, he is happiest working on projects that are for a local audience and that might have meaning for them.
His next project, The Guinea Pig Club, will be based on the work of Archibald McIndoe, the Dunedin-born plastic surgeon who repaired the "bodies and souls" of burnt young pilots during World War 2. The feature film is to be directed by Roger Donaldson and filmed next year.
