Our writers share their thoughts on this year’s Whānau Mārama: New Zealand International Film Festival selections.
This year’s festival features plenty of gems – check out what we’re watching, and keep checking this page for the latest mini-reviews, updated throughout the festival.
All 2023 mini-reviews:
Latest reviews | A – E | F – L | M – R | S – Z
Afire
Christian Petzold’s latest is a smouldering, timely, and tight little tale of friends, lovers, strangers, and grumps, set in a seaside German village under looming threat of encroaching wildfires. As the story unfolds and manners unravel, the myth of the tortured creative genius is laid beautifully bare, and we all have a good hard look at our occasional tendencies to forsake joy in the name of sulky stubbornness, in order to—spoiler alert—transfer our seething insecurities onto others. MATTHEW CRAWLEY
Christian Petzold’s latest work is a prickly Rohmer-esque idyll that undulates with currents of desire, bitterness and unease as his protagonists navigate art, literature, longing, and tragedy along the Baltic coast. Like his best films, Afire, with its subtly delineated characters and elegant psychological acuity, sneaks up on you with a cumulative power. AARON YAP
Anatomy of a Fall
Director Justine Triet’s intelligent, adult drama takes its own sweet time, but once it grabs you, it won’t let go. Understated, deliberate, and deft, this powerful rumination on tragedy, relationships, the lies we tell ourselves, and the truths we avoid, is buoyed by a superb script, believable performances, and a welcome avoidance of neat moral conclusions, in favour of leaving room for the audience. ADAM FRESCO
With an extraordinary central performance from Sandra Hüller (and an equally good supporting one from Snoop the dog) Anatomy of a Fall’s dissection of a marriage in the aftermath of a tragic event is enigmatic, deeply complex, and absolutely searing. Though long at 150 minutes (the predominantly elderly Civic audience I saw it with certainly seemed to think so), in the age of streaming it’s the kind of story that would typically be stretched out over hours and hours of prestige limited series—and I found it deeply rewarding to be so immersed in a version that so adamantly resists easy resolution. KATIE PARKER
The wonderfully thought-provoking ambiguity that hangs over this film is I think its greatest achievement. What it says about things like modern criminal court processes has been very satisfying to think about and talk about since I left the cinema, while a pivotal, fierce argument between a wife and husband has also stuck in my mind, largely thanks to the dynamite central performance. I also love how this will be the only film festival opener ever whose two major musical numbers are renditions of Isaac Albéniz’s ‘Leyenda’ and 50 Cent’s ‘P.I.M.P’. DANIEL RUTLEDGE
A smouldering commentary on the expectations of gender in relationships, academia and parenthood. The film’s subtext teeters on the precipice of didacticism in the courtroom, but is redeemed by the spectacular final act. Incredible central performances from Sandra Hüller and Milo Machado Graner (not to mention Messi as Snoop the Dog). Stressful, funny and heartbreaking—it’s very worthy of its critical gongs. RACHEL ASHBY
This year’s Palme d’Or winner is a great lesson in ambiguity—or more so, the absence of clear evidence for both the court proceedings depicted and also the viewer. Patient French procedural lives by its great performances, especially Sandra Hüller. The real criminal? Might be whoever gave the great lead kid his haircut… STEVE NEWALL
Jury Simulator 2023, in a very good way. The film’s compelling, calculating depiction of legal proceedings dumps you straight in the middle of uncertainty, with flashbacks only playing in sync with the presented evidence and the sublime Sandra Hüller provoking sympathy one moment and cynicism the next. A worthy winner of the Palme d’Or, the Palme Dog and, if it existed, the Palme Kid. LIAM MAGUREN
Animation for Kids 8+
It broke my heart a little to be one of the only adults in the cinema who felt completely fine about attending this screening without a kid because there’s so much visual invention and crafty storytelling on offer here. Shackle, for example, plays with puppetry and natural light in a way I’ve never seen from stop-motion, and You Sold My Rollerskates pumps all manner of visual narrative devices into its 6-minute runtime. Fortunately, there were heaps of kids who got a good dollop of stellar filmmaking outside the box of what they regularly watch—that stitched my heart back up. LIAM MAGUREN
Animation NOW! International Showcase
One of the stronger showcases from Animation NOW!, fuelled by a powerful variety of animation styles that borders on stimulation overload. Highlights include The Flying Sailor, the Oscar-nominated multimedia cosmological trip that looked great on the big screen, The Debutante, a story about a woman and her hyena friend told with inspired use of rotoscope, and an engulfing visual rendition of What’s Love Got to Do with It that adapts Miles Davis’s drawings into abstract bliss. The only short I didn’t care for was XI, which seemed to equate the weight of human history and the molecular structure of the universe to… football. LIAM MAGUREN
Animation NOW! Late Night Bizarre
Busting loose with a sea shanty diss track, this screening never let the bizarre-o-metre dip with its cavalcade of bouncing butts, barking apartments, banana men, fleshy wad critters, hot furry poetry, extendable dachshund, parallel VR dimensions… Very wild. Very horny. Would happily do this every year in a dark room with a group of strangers. LIAM MAGUREN
Animation NOW! Within the Realm of Horror
If you called this Animation NOW! Gross Face Stuff, no one would have questioned it. Not as strong as this year’s other Animation NOW! offerings as the shorts have a very loose thematic connection (some feel like off-cuts from the other two showcases) but I was massively immersed in Joseph Pierce’s wicked drug-frenzy nightmare Scale (I’d love to see his take on A Scanner Darkly) and Emma Calder’s one-of-a-kind psycho-trip Beware of Trains. LIAM MAGUREN
Are you there God? It’s Me, Margaret
I would like to blame my Sunday afternoon hangover for weeping in this one, but honestly, the film was just so bloody lovely and heartwarming. Judy Blume’s story of girlhood and growing up is a classic for a reason, and this adaptation certainly pleased a crowd full of mums, daughters, aunties and grandmas at the Civic. Abby Ryder Fortson as the titular Margaret is wonderful, bringing all the agony and joy of tweendom to life with earnestness and authenticity. Take a significant woman in your life to a screening ASAP (and maybe also a box of tissues). RACHEL ASHBY
Asteroid City
People who say they’re sick of Wes Anderson are the same people who love telling you The Beatles are overrated. This is the new Wes Anderson movie, and how you feel about that statement will ensure your biases are confirmed. Loved it. MATTHEW CRAWLEY
Very pretty and pretty vapid. Wesheads will froth it I’m sure: but if you’re more of an ‘I loved Fantastic Mr Fox’ fan—you might find the film’s insularity gratingly smug. In a cast riddled with stars, Tom Hanks’ brief moments remind you that it is actually possible to put some emotion into a quirky delivery, meanwhile Jeff Goldblum’s blink-and-you’ll-miss-it appearance as the alien solicited a genuine laugh. It was fun to watch at the sold-out Civic for the atmospheric vibes, but by the third act my neighbour was snoring and I can’t say I blame him. RACHEL ASHBY
Wes’s latest is about as Wes Andersony as you can get. The filmmaker’s style is now practically a genre in itself. From the beautifully balanced framing, to the precision of the colour scheme, the fame of the actors, the quirkiness of the sets, to the meta-irony of the scripts. For Wes fans like me, it’s cinematic catnip. A star-studded, deadpan comedy, I get it’s not to everyone’s taste, but gosh darn it, Wes’s work, however arch, leaves a big, stupid grin on my cynical critic’s face. Seen on the big Civic screen it lit up my visual cortex and buzzed my brain. ADAM FRESCO
It’s fascinating how Wes Anderson comes in and out of film fashion, and the recent online discourse surrounding his meticulous aesthetic—ignited by copycat Tiktokers and AI enthusiasts—has only further confused the consensus as to whether he is a cool genius or twee cornball. Asteroid City doubles down on Anderson’s penchant for perfection, exploring his preoccupation with artifice to a degree that borders on Brechtian. The result is inarguably exquisite, if a little emotionally opaque—and proof that however recognisable Anderson’s style may be, he remains Inimitable. KATIE PARKER
Bad Behaviour
“Once, we were whole, but now we’re not; now we suffer from a sickness we struggle to grasp or name. Yet this wound provides our new identity, at once the thing that gives us the right to speak and the only thing we have left to say when we do. Underwritten by its literalism, our trauma is the guarantor of what we believe we are owed.” – Carr, Danielle (2023, July 31). Tell Me Why It Hurts. New York Magazine.
Jennifer Connelly crackles when centered within the first act of writer/director/performer Alice Englert’s tale of traumas—as does outstanding deadpan satire from Ben Whishaw and Dasha Nekrasova, characters nudging the pens of their sometime peers Jesse Armstrong and Chris Morris. Sadly, such highs do not last the film’s length. SARAH THOMSON
Beyond Utopia
Extraordinary, effectively gruelling documentary about pastor aiding family of defectors out of North Korea. Told with chilling, intimate hidden-cam footage that feels illegal to watch, Madeleine Gavin’s film is both a breathless on-the-run thriller and an eye-opening crash course in the country’s nightmarish, surreally oppressive dictatorship. AARON YAP
A documentary so bleak in parts it made us walk out of Oppenheimer for coming off “too pedestrian” afterwards, Beyond Utopia follows real humans attempting to escape North Korea into the South via the most harrowing means imaginable. Recommended if you’re not stressed enough and like your adrenaline with a side of dread, shaken AND stirred. MATTHEW CRAWLEY
There’s no arguing that the images smuggled out of North Korea—even more so the footage following a family trying to escape through China, and a mother in South Korea attempting to locate her son in the North—are extremely compelling. A pity that the music constantly works to goose your emotions when it doesn’t need to, and that the filmmakers included a whiff of American elitism. That may be nitpicking though—on a human level this is revelatory and devastating. TONY STAMP
An extraordinary documentary filled with unbelievable footage of North Koreans escaping the country, this is a powerful and deeply moving watch with a lot of raw human emotion so candid and intimate it sometimes feels like you shouldn’t be seeing it. There are a few minor missteps from the filmmakers—the worst being adding emotive music to scenes that would have been more effective without it—but nonetheless this is a cinema experience I won’t forget and it could well be the most powerful documentary of 2023. DANIEL RUTLEDGE
What if you found out that the world you lived in was a lie? This science fiction framing introduces us to the mind-warped reality of the subjects of Beyond Utopia, a documentary following the life threatening lengths one family must endure to escape North Korea. The filmmakers make it clear up top that there are no re-enactments, and what we’re seeing has been captured at extreme risk to the participants. Edited with brief, but essential historical framing, we’re with the family the entire way, led by sketchy ‘brokers’ as they move between safe houses, crawling across mountains in the dead of night, and witness for the first time the world outside of their ‘Utopia’. A thrilling, eye-opening documentary that genuinely left me questioning my own reality. CALLUM DEVLIN
Mind-blowing, jaw-dropping stuff! Beyond Utopia confirmed the worst I’d heard about life in North Korea and then some, with unrivalled access to those who have escaped, those still trying to, and the gut wrenching reality of failed attempts at freedom. Not just an invaluable piece of journalism, Beyond Utopia is stunningly crafted in its composition, edit, and mixed media. I recommend this film! Bonus material: Some 12 years ago I earnestly asked my high school desk mate whether she was from North or South Korea. ANNABEL KEAN
Bone-chilling doco on escapees from North Korea shows they’re fleeing both a militarised and psychological prison. Startling handheld footage of a family’s escape (grandmother, parents, kids), a refugee mother’s heartbreaking search for her son, and the work of a South Korean pastor who pays ‘brokers’ to smuggle people out leaves no doubt about the life and death stakes. Beyond Utopia also reveals the depths of collective insanity a ruthless, dictator-led society can descend into as reality is contrasted against familiar propaganda imagery that takes on increasingly sinister tones. STEVE NEWALL
Bobi Wine: The People’s President
Came out of this chronicling of Ugandan slum kid-turned pop star-turned Presidential aspirant wanting a lot more context. Still a recommended watch with its inspiring/frightening proximity to Bobi Wine as he challenges the decades-long rule of Ugandan leader Yoweri Museveni—who marshals all the autocratic, extrajudicial, procedural and violent forces he can against Bobi’s campaign to democratically unseat him. Third—no, fourth—militaristic regime-tinged doco in a week of NZIFF, fuck me days. STEVE NEWALL
Building Bridges: Bill Youren’s Vision of Peace
A surprising and engaging window into post-war pacifism in Aotearoa told through the biography of the unlikely activist Bill Youren. John Christoffells’ film tells Youren’s story predominantly through his own camera lens which is equally fascinated by new farm technology in Hawke’s Bay as it is in pre-cultural revolution China. It’s a remarkable archive soundtracked by a dreamy score from Anita Clarke (Aka Motte). The steadiness of pace and gentleness of approach serve the story well, revealing Youren’s delightful curiosity and staunch beliefs. RACHEL ASHBY
Carmen
Choreographer Benjamin Millepied’s first film takes Bizet’s exciting opera Carmen, and somehow manages to make it a turgid bore. Sure, it’s a beautifully shot bore, with a score by Succession composer Nicholas Brittell, but neither save this from being the type of arthouse festival fodder that will have some cinephiles salivating, whilst the rest of us doze off, dreaming of a story and characters a wee bit deeper than this dull mirage of a desert puddle. ADAM FRESCO
Charcoal
‘Drug dealer goes into hiding with rural family’ sounds like the setup for a fish out of water comedy, and while this is certainly amusing in fits and starts, it packs plenty of acidic subtext under the hood. Capitalism and religion receive light skewering, while the backdrop of Brazilian countryside provides welcome visual tranquility. TONY STAMP
The Circus
There was a child behind me cracking up at every minute of this nearly 100-year-old film. There’s nothing I could add about this live cinema Charlie Chaplin experience that could say more about the power of cinema. LIAM MAGUREN
Accompanied by the Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra, playing Charlie Chaplin’s 1969 score, this screening of one of the silent comedian’s masterpieces was a sheer delight to behold at Auckland’s sumptuous Civic Theatre. Hard to dismiss auteur theory when you realise Chaplin didn’t just compose the music, play the lead, and direct—he wrote, produced, and edited it too! The crisp black and white photography by Roland Totheroh stands the test of time, as does Chaplin’s humanity, warmth, and skill, both in front of and behind the lens. A magical visual and musical trip to the circus. ADAM FRESCO
De Humani Corporis Fabrica
Icky, invasive procedures of the flesh straight out of your favorite Cronenberg body-horror romp blown up into blotches of expressionist painterly abstraction and Space Odyssey-Stargate trippiness. In the background, a more starkly quotidian horror unfolds. Wince-inducing, viscerally confronting, but no less immersive and mind-expanding than the directors’ 2012 masterpiece, Leviathan. AARON YAP
Voyaging where TV medical docos dare not, my gleeful fascination with this unvarnished experience of the opened human body made me feel like a right sicko. Matched by a grungy and uncomfortably close camera wandering the hospital halls, the uncensored footage of eye surgery and spinal reconstruction et al sit on top of a more disgusting reality—the horrendous state of an underfunded and overworked medical system. Still unsure what that last shot was about. LIAM MAGUREN
Detour
Maximum sad-sack noir, complete with a sad sax soundtrack and awesome idioms like “my goose was cooked.” Barrels down a comedy-of-errors trajectory with utter seriousness which, while unintentionally hilarious, suits the film like a felt fedora. Reportedly, Ann Savage detested lead actor Tom Neal’s inappropriate on-set behaviour and boy does it show in her fired-up, antagonistic, applause-worthy performance. LIAM MAGUREN
Nearly eighty years since its first release and Edgar Ulmer’s gritty 1945 roadtrip-to-hell noir still packs a savage punch in this shimmering restoration. Ann Savage sizzles in stark black and white as the femme fatale who rips drifter Tom Neal’s life to shreds. Razor-sharp dialogue, tight-as-a-noose plot, cynical characters, and a stripped-back, lean and mean seventy-minute run-time make this a dark and deadly detour well worth taking again. ADAM FRESCO
Dounia and the Princess of Aleppo
While limited by its cookie-cutter storytelling, Dounia and the Princess of Aleppo at least knows that kids love cookies and should be commended for making the tough subject of refugee life palatable for movie lovers of all ages. Despite a heavy reliance on Captain Planet-style magic seeds that solve every problem, its simple story remains sweet thanks to its big-hearted characters—especially Dounia’s kuia and koro who are Grandparents of the Year material. LIAM MAGUREN
Elephant 6
An endearing and chaotic film, the Elephant 6 Recording co. doco is more than a little rough around the edges, but it’s a style befitting its subject. A great watch for mega fans and the uninitiated alike: the film takes on the tricky task of untangling the story of how the legendary band-collective (Record label? Commune? Performance project?) came to be. Full of heart and humour and excellent music, it’s ultimately a scruffy and moving ode to friendship and creative community. RACHEL ASHBY
Ennio
Giuseppe Tornatore’s documentary can barely contain the vast achievements of Morricone’s work as a composer, conductor, and orchestrator, spanning the worlds of music, arts, and cinema. All good, no bad or ugly, it’s a joyous celebration, serving as a richly rewarding introduction to “The Maestro” that leaves you, as all great summaries should, wanting much, much more. ADAM FRESCO
Boiling down a 74-year career into a single film was never going to be easy, but Cinema Paradiso director Giuseppe Tornatore’s Ennio does an admirable job across its two-and-a-half hours. Sure, it’s a little documentary-by-numbers, and maybe a touch heavy on the ebullient praise from its numerous talking head guests, but if anyone deserves the superlatives it’s Maestro Morricone. The true magic here is in the often emotional interviews given by the man himself not long before his death in 2020, reflecting on what was nothing shy of an extraordinary career. MATTHEW CRAWLEY
EO
Ten gold stars for this mesmeric Polish dream-fable, perhaps best described as David Lynch-does-Milo and Otis, but with a donkey and no off-camera animal cruelty. No gold stars for the huffy, chatty boomers behind us that walked out after loudly sighing for 45 minutes because it didn’t have Julia Roberts in it. Also, a good chance to win NZIFF bingo with an obligatory and always welcome Isabelle Huppert cameo. MATTHEW CRAWLEY
Taking its lead from Robert Bresson’s 1966 donkey-led drama Au Hasard Balthazar, this is an impressive, immersive, and beautifully shot film, ideally seen on the big screen. Jerzy Skolimowski’s tale takes a donkey’s-eye-view of humanity through modern Europe. Moving, amusing, thoughtful, and despite its premise, an almost miraculously unpretentious film. Five carrots and no neighs from me. ADAM FRESCO
This trippy donkey movie will give you as much of the Whānau Mārama experience as one could hope for in under 90 minutes. My bigger review. LIAM MAGUREN
Even Hell Has Its Heroes
Feature-length doco on distorted dronemaster band Earth proved a little frustrating. It looks great (shot on film), but the stylistic choice/budgetary necessity of not syncing audio and video robbed personal accounts and live performances of their power to connect (there’s only so much chat from disembodied voices you wanna hear, no matter how moody the visuals). A plodding structure did not help. Earth remain hypnotic, and there’s cool stuff here, but it doesn’t click. STEVE NEWALL
All 2023 mini-reviews:
Latest reviews | A – E | F – L | M – R | S – Z
