The goodness has started! The New Zealand International Film Festival has announced five Sundance-winning titles that will be arriving to our fair nation for this year’s schedule, from documentaries of the bizarre kind to comedy dramas of the foul-mouthed-granny variety.
The Wolfpack
The winner of the Documentary Grand Jury Prize at Sundance this year, Crystal Moselle’s film The Wolfpack delves into the bizarrely sheltered lives of six brothers whose father has confined them and their sister since birth to the tiny rooms of their Lower East Side apartment.
The Diary of a Teenage Girl
From the Sundance U.S. Dramatic Competition section NZIFF has secured Marielle Heller’s The Diary of a Teenage Girl based on the graphic novel by Phoebe Glockener. Exhilarating in its candour and ironic verve, The Diary of a Teenage Girl recounts the visceral thrills and spills of 15-year-old boundary-pushing Minnie (Bel Powley) as she throws herself into her first affair – with her mother’s boyfriend.
Umrika
Winner of Sundance’s Audience Award for World Cinema, writer/director Prashant Nair’s Umrika is a handsomely produced Bollywood film telling a classic tale of country lads finding their bearings in the big city.
Grandma
In Grandma, a constantly surprising comedy drama from About a Boy director Paul Weitz, Lily Tomlin is hilarious and moving as a sharp-tongued, taboo-breaking granny who comes out fighting for her pregnant teenage granddaughter.
Cartel Land
Matthew Heineman’s unnervingly action-based documentary Cartel Land captures the impact of Mexican drug cartels on both sides of the border. With staggering front-line access, Heineman observes the retaliatory forces that have formed in response to oppressive cartel violence and governmental indifference.
