From Cannes heavy-hitters to charming local comedies, Thomas Giblin makes his picks for this year’s Whānau Mārama: New Zealand International Film Festival.
Rejoice, film fans of Aotearoa. Whānau Mārama, the New Zealand International Film Festival, has rolled around once again with its globe-trotting smorgasbord of cinematic curiosities and hotly-anticipated world premieres. The festival features over 100 films this year and is set to light up screens across the motu from July 31 to September 10. Opening in Tāmaki Makaurau with Palme d’Or winner It Was Just An Accident and in Ōtepoti with the iconoclastic, homegrown Life in One Chord, escape from the glacial breath of winter for a precious few hours with a film that reinvigorates your lust for life.
With so many appetising films on offer, how do you decipher the programme and decide what to watch? Luckily, I got a sneak peek, and have whittled the stacked lineup down to a handful of essential cinematic gems. From history-making Fijian and Nigerian feature film debuts to Cannes heavy-hitters and charming local comedies, here are my 10 must-see picks (in alphabetical order).
Bati
Bati, Andrew John Fakaua Ponton’s directorial debut, is the first Fijian feature film to screen at the festival. It tells the heart-rending story of Sam (James Rabuatoka) and Rachel (Jedidiah Tuinasavusavu), two sweethearts who move from the lush highlands of Namosi to embark on a new chapter together in the bustling metropolis of Suva. His modest salary as a security guard isn’t enough to pay the bills, so the fiery-eyed, iron-jawed family man decides to pursue his dream of becoming a professional boxer. A Rocky-esque underdog story, enlivened with a uniquely Fijian cast, crew and spirit, Bati is set to be a stunning KO.
It Was Just an Accident
Awarded the Palme d’Or at Cannes, It Was Just an Accident is the legendary Iranian director’s Jafar Panahi’s first film since his release from prison in February 2023. Beginning innocuously with a minor bump in the road, Eghbal (Ebrahim Azizi) and his pregnant partner (Mariam Afshari) pull over at Vahid’s (Vahid Mobasseri) auto-repair garage, unwittingly setting in motion a series of escalating events. Summoning “all the medium’s expressive powers to deliver a fierce, unambiguous denunciation of authoritarian regimes the world over,” It Was Just an Accident might just be Panahi’s most personal and powerful act of political resistance yet.
My Father’s Shadow
Described as “a masterwork” and “a new peak for African cinema”, the debut film from Akinola Davies Jr is the first-ever Nigerian film to premiere at Cannes. Davies Jr, who wrote the screenplay with his brother Wale, casts real-life brothers Godwin and Chibuike Marvellous Egbo as Akin and Remi, two young siblings who spend a day in Lagos with their estranged father (Ṣọpẹ́ Dìrísù) amid the 1993 Nigerian presidential election. Infused with magical realism and set against a tense political backdrop, My Father’s Shadow is a tender tracing of fatherhood and loss that is bound to make you bawl.
Notes from a Fish
Returning festival alum Tom Levesque joins forces with local actor Romy Hooper to direct Notes from a Fish. Shot in 10 days on a micro-budget in the familiar inner suburbs of Tāmaki Makaurau, the black comedy shadows Leroy (Emilio Mancilla), an aspiring writer on the cusp of a career breakthrough. His creative mojo is connected to Kirby, an exotic fish he’s looking after, so when the psychic piscine slips out of his grasp, Leroy teams up with Charlie (Romy Hooper), a chaotic former fisheries officer. Reminiscent of Barton Fink and Under The Silver Lake, make sure to catch this riotous exploration of the brittle intersection of creativity, inspiration and self-worth.
Resurrection
Helming just two feature films and aged only 36, the Chinese cineaste Bi Gan has already established himself as a master craftsman whose audacious, highly stylised oeuvre is a wonder to behold. Returning after seven years with Resurrection, which won the Prix Spécial at Cannes, Bi has delivered a “transcendent vision” that “seeps so deep into the marrow that it lives in the space between breaths.” Divided into six collagic chapters, the hallucinogenic plot follows a monster who, in a world where humanity has lost the ability to dream, drifts through the history of China and cinema. Simply put: “this kind of unhinged ambition is what cinema does better than anything else.”
Sirât
Taking its name from the Islamic bridge that separates heaven from hell, French born Spanish filmmaker Oliver Laxe’s Sirât is “a truly staggering and major film” that “has to be seen to be believed.” Set in the deserts of Morocco, a Mad-Max-like apocalyptic wasteland occupied by ravers and military convoys, stricken father Luis (Sergi López) is searching for his daughter. Hearing whispers of a future party where she could be, he journeys deeper into the desert, descending into a philosophical and existential abyss. Befittingly and beautifully rendered on grainy 16mm and soundtracked by ear-splitting bass, Sirât is one hell of a trip.
Two Prosecutors
Best known for his acclaimed documentaries examining Soviet and post-Soviet life, the outspoken Ukrainian director Sergei Loznitsa returns to fiction with Two Prosecutors, an adaptation of the long-unpublished eponymous novel by physicist and Gulag survivor Georgy Demidov. Set during the stifling terror of Stalin’s Great Purge, the “disturbing parable of the insidious micro-processes of tyranny,” follows Kornyev (Aleksandr Kuznetsov), an idealistic law school graduate seeking justice for a falsely accused detainee of the repressive NKVD. It’s been said that Loznitsa “is reflecting on the past here, but for anyone who cares to look, he’s holding a mirror up to the present.”
Urchin
Recently cast as John Lennon in Sam Mendes’s biopic treatment of The Beatles, Harris Dickinson has quickly become one of Hollywood’s most in-demand actors. With the London-set Urchin, Dickinson’s directorial debut, “the burgeoning movie star tries his hand at a new skill, and proves to be a rare natural.” Shot in verité style, the character study traces the life of Michael (Frank Dillane), an unhoused person struggling to break free from a cycle of substance abuse-fuelled self-destruction but, as the title suggests, is hiding something soft inside his spiky exterior. For this “revelatory” performance, Dillane was awarded the best actor prize by the Un Certain Regard jury at Cannes.
The Wolves Always Come at Night
Australian filmmaker Gabrielle Brady’s The Wolves Always Come at Night is an inventive hybrid work of docufiction following a nomadic couple, Davaa and Zaya, their four children, and the flock of animals they care for. Living on the sprawling steppes of the Gobi desert, the family are forced to abandon their livelihood after a devastating dust storm and leave for Ulaanbaatar. Working hand-in-hand with Davaa and Zaya, who are credited as co-writers, this somber meditation on a fast disappearing way of life “lays bare the emotional ruptures of climate change and urban migration“.
Workmates
Previously making local hits Fantail and Baby, Done together, Workmates marks the third feature film from married director, actor and writer duo Curtis Vowell and Sophie Henderson. Born out of a community’s struggle to make art in a Covid-19 world and drawn from real-life experiences, Lucy (Sophie Henderson) and Tom (Matt Whelan) are best friends running the underfunded and structurally unsound Crystal Ballroom. When an accident threatens to shut down the theatre for good, Lucy finds out just how far she’ll go for the theatre and for Tom, who she might just love. The “superb new romantic dramedy”, shot mostly on location at the Basement Theatre, is a coming-of-age film for the late bloomers among us.
Click here to read the full Whānau Marama: New Zealand International Film Festival programme.
