More than 700 entries across 57 categories were received this year, highlighting the storytelling, creativity and technical excellence driving NZ’s film and TV landscape.
Screentime NZ and Real Film Berlin’s A Remarkable Place to Die (ARPTD)— shot entirely in the Whakatipu over several months last year — is a finalist in ‘best drama series’, alongside The Brokenwood Mysteries, Dead Ahead, and The Gone Season 2, and ARPTD’s Plan 9 (Janet Roddick, Steve Roche and David Donaldson) is a finalist for ‘best score in a series’, up against Mahuia Bridgman-Cooper (The Gone Season 2), and Stephen Gallagher and David Long (Secrets At Red Rocks).
Additionally, David Cameron, who also worked on ARPTD, is up against himself for Madam and Simon Tutty (Secrets at Red Rocks) in the ‘best cinematography: drama series’ category.
In ‘best production design: series’, John Allan’s a finalist for his work on Under the Vines Season 3, partly shot in and around the resort, as are Nick Williams (The Gone Season 2) and Kylie Tiuka (End of the Valley), while Verity Griffiths and Brydie Stone are finalists for ‘best makeup design: feature’ for apocalyptic action horror Forgive Us All, shot entirely in the Whakatipu last year.
They’re up against Frankie Karena and Don Brooker (The Rule of Jenny Penn) and Gabrielle Jones (The Convert).
Great Southern Television (GST), headed up by Queenstowner Philip Smith, has two nods — The Restaurant That Makes Mistakes (part-time Queenstowner Ben Bayly, Adrian Stevanon, Sam Blackley, Briar Coleman and Smith) is a finalist in ‘best reality series’, alongside The Traitors NZ and Match Fit: Union vs League, and The Hui (Rewa Harriman, Ruawini Perera and John Boynton) is a finalist in best current affairs programme, with Te Ao with Moana and Mata with Mihingarangi Forbes.
And Victoria Boult, 27, who last week won Bend Film Festival’s ‘best indigenous short’ in the United States for Invisible Dragons, has been named a finalist for ‘best script: series’, for n00b (GST/Three and ThreeNow) — she’s up against Richard J Curtis and Lea Mclean (End of the Valley), Tim Balme (The Brokenwood Mysteries) and Dan Musgrove (Happiness).
Winners will be announced in Auckland on November 21.
