The New Zealand International Film Festival (NZIFF) today announced that New Zealand film The Dark Horse will have its world premiere at the opening night of the Festival in 2014.
The Dark Horse will open NZIFF in Auckland on 17 July at the Civic Theatre and Wellington on 25 July at the Embassy Theatre. The film is directed by James Napier Robertson, produced by Tom Hern, and stars Cliff Curtis (Once Were Warriors, Whale Rider) and James Rolleston (Boy). The Dark Horse is an inspiring true story based on the life of a charismatic, brilliant but little-known New Zealand Hero and Chess champion – Genesis Potini.
A further 12 New Zealand films will be making their national premieres in the festival, 10 of which will have their world premieres at NZIFF. See the full list of films below.
“At NZIFF we’ve worked long and hard to create the best possible setting to celebrate and launch the work of our own filmmakers. We’ve been more than amply rewarded this year with the world premiere screening, on our opening night, of The Dark Horse, a film that we know is going to mean a lot to New Zealand audiences for years to come. We’re just as proud to be providing a rousing welcome home to Gerard Johnstone’s hilarious Housebound, which premiered to ecstatic audiences earlier this year at SXSW,” says NZIFF Director Bill Gosden.
“NZIFF will also premiere a further three local features, each of which demonstrates amazing inventiveness on a low budget, and eight New Zealand documentaries covering a diversity of subjects, both local and international,” says Gosden.
Aunty and the Star People
World Premiere | 82 minutes | Dir Gerard Smyth
In New Zealand, writer Jean Watson is an anonymous elderly woman living in a modest Wellington flat. In southern India she is revered as the famous ‘Jean Aunty’. Gerard Smyth’s documentary explores her fascinating double life.
Cap Bocage
World Premiere | 73 minutes | Dir Jim Marbrook
Jim Marbrook, director of Mental Notes and the original Dark Horse documentary, takes us inside the long environmental campaign that followed the pollution of traditional Kanak fishing grounds in New Caledonia in 2008.
Erewhon
World Premiere | 92 minutes | Dir Gavin Hipkins
For his first feature-length film the widely exhibited New Zealand photographer Gavin Hipkins invests a richly pictorial essay with the 21st-century resonance of Samuel Butler’s lively utopian satire Erewhon, written in 1872.
Everything We Loved
100 minutes | Dir Max Currie
A man, a woman and a four-year-old boy retreat to a house outside town. What are they hiding from? Debut writer/director Max Currie staggers the revelations to dramatic effect in this suspenseful psychological drama.
Hot Air
World Premiere | 90 minutes | Dir Alister Barry, Abi King-Jones
In the years since New Zealand politicians began to grapple with climate change our carbon emissions have burgeoned. Alister Barry’s doco draws on TV archives and interviews with key participants to find out why.
Housebound
107 minutes | Dir Gerard Johnstone
Welcome home to the Kiwi horror house comedy that took SXSW by storm. Gerard Johnstone’s brilliant genre mash-up stars Rima Te Wiata, Morgana O’Reilly, Glen-Paul Waru and Cameron Rhodes.
Voices of the Land Nga Reo o te Whenua
World Premiere | 96 minutes | Dir Paul Wolffram
Paul Wolffram’s fascinating and eloquent doco about Māori instrumental traditions accompanies Richard Nunns and Horomona Horo as they perform in a series of remarkable South Island wilderness settings.
notes to eternity
World Premiere | 150 minutes | Dir Sarah Cordery
Renowned critics of Israeli policies – Noam Chomsky, Norman Finkelstein, Sara Roy and Robert Fisk – provide personal substance and historical perspective to their arguments in this impressive film by New Zealander Sarah Cordery.
Orphans and Kingdoms
World Premiere | 84 minutes | Dir Paolo Rotondo
In writer/director Paolo Rotondo’s debut feature, three homeless teenagers break into a deluxe Waiheke Island home and find themselves caught in a tense psychodrama with the conflicted owner.
REALITi
World Premiere | 95 minutes | Dir Jonathan King
An up-and-coming media executive has good reason to question the very facts of his existence in this micro-budget sci-fi chiller from director Jonathan King (Black Sheep, Under the Mountain) and novelist Chad Taylor.
Te Awa Tupua: Voices from the River
World Premiere | 67 minutes | Dir Paora Joseph
This beautiful new film from the director of Tatarakihi honours the power and poetry in the stories of Whanganui iwi, past and present, and their longstanding struggle to reclaim guardianship over their ancestral river.
Tumanako/Hope
World Premiere | 90 minutes | Dir Susy Pointon
Many roads lead to the Hokianga in this engaging documentary portrait of several generations of inhabitants: local iwi, long-established farming families, and the alternative lifestylers of the ’60s and ’70s who put down roots and stayed.
