The Dunedin leg of Whānau Mārama: New Zealand International Film Festival opens today (Friday 5th November). Running across 17 days at The Regent Theatre and Rialto Cinemas Dunedin, the festival will showcase 92 feature films from 37 countries.
Highlights from the international offering include, Maggie Gyllenhaal’s award-winning thriller, The Lost Daughter, starring Olivia Colman; decorated Chinese director Zhang Yimou’s love letter to cinema, One Second; Bosnia and Herzegovinia’s Oscar-nominated film, Jasmila Zbanic’s Quo Vadis, Aida?; and the eagerly anticipated homage to the legacy of world-famous chef, Anthony Bourdain, Roadrunner: A Film About Anthony Bourdain.
Delivering star power is Berlin Golden Bear nominee, Maria Schrader’s I’m Your Man, featuring Downton Abbey’s Dan Stevens as a love android; colourful televangelist biopic The Eyes of Tammy Faye, starring Jessica Chastain and Andrew Garfield, and moving literary memoir My Salinger Year, staring Sigourney Weaver.
Fifteen films direct from Cannes Film Festival are confirmed to screen in Dunedin, including Palme D’or winner Titane, set to close the festival in an unforgettable fashion; along with Grand Prix award winners, A Hero, from decorated Iranian director Asghar Farhadi and Juho Kuosmanen’s offbeat train romance, Compartment No. 6.
Twelve New Zealand films will screen in Dunedin, including locally shot There Is No I in Threesome from director Jan Oliver Lucks. The film, which makes its New Zealand premiere following a critically acclaimed run on HBO Max in the USA, documents what happens when newly engaged Lucks and his fiancée decide to throw tradition out the window, opening up their relationship before they get married.
Other notable Kiwi titles include, Briar March’s Mothers of the Revolution, which unpacks the story of how, between 1981 and 2000, thousands of women, came together at Greenham Common in England to make a stand against nuclear proliferation and how they changed the world; Michelle Savill’s drama Millie Lies Low, starring Ana Scotney as a broke and anxiety-ridden architecture graduate, who, after missing her flight to New York, must keep up the pretense of being in the Big Apple while she lays low in her hometown; documentary Milked, a powerful examination of New Zealand’s multi-billion-dollar dairy industry, which will have its world premiere at Rialto Cinemas Dunedin; and Mark Hunt: The Fight of His Life, a warts and all documentary following kickboxing and mixed martial superstar Mark Hunt, one of New Zealand's most successful sportspeople.
In addition to these features, short film competitions New Zealand’s Best and Ngā Whanaunga Māori Pasifika Shorts will screen, and additional homegrown shorts will play ahead of feature films throughout the festival.
Whānau Mārama: New Zealand International Film Festival plays in Dunedin from 5 – 21 November. Head to nziff.co.nz for further information and to purchase tickets.
