This year’s Whānau Mārama: New Zealand International Film Festival is now underway, and features plenty of gems.
Check out what we’re watching, and keep checking this page for our latest reactions, updated throughout the festival.
Ebony & Ivory
OK, you’re either going to be on the wavelength of this absurd-as-absurd-can-be comedy or you really, really will not (I loved every second of it). An uncharitable description of this would be ‘comedy sketch stretched out to feature length’, however that description also works in the film’s favour, with breathing room and repetition (and repetition and repetition…) doing a lot of its comedic/hypnotic heavy lifting. Great performances, incredible art department and excellently incongruous score from former Fuck Button Andrew Hung.
STEVE NEWALL
DJ Ahmet
Footloose by way of Northern Macedonia, this hits all the expected beats of coming-of-age colliding with uptight parenting and tradition, but does so well enough to earn its place in the programme—even with its predictability. The good young leads certainly help. Found myself recommending this as a median NZIFF film that would be great to take an older relative to, faint praise though this may be. Hope the pink-dyed sheep is doing ok…
STEVE NEWALL
Late Shift
Riding shotgun with a nurse in an understaffed hospital, I felt stress gradually expanding in my chest across all 90 minutes of filmmaker Petra Biondina Volpe’s tense but empathetic feature. While the relentless chainsaw juggling tasks effortlessly engages, it’s the tender moments our head nurse chooses to slow down for—ticking clock be damned—that stayed with me. The end captions hit like a thrown brick to the teeth, especially with what’s currently going on in Aotearoa’s nursing sector.
LIAM MAGUREN
Mistress Dispeller
Fascinating contemporary Chinese doco follows a professional breaker-upperer, engaged to find out the truth about a philandering husband and disengage him from his mistress. Through subterfuge and persistence, the mistress dispeller shows a deft hand at deceit in the name of true love. Conversations are allowed to run long in this observational pic, which leaves you asking many questions, such as why did the husband agree to take part, and when can we have a Western version starring Nathan Fielder?
STEVE NEWALL
Pavements
A traditional doco could never capture the ethos, impact, or personalities of iconic 90s band Pavement. There’s enough archive and reminiscence here to satisfy a historical perspective, but filmmaker Alex Ross Perry utterly nails an unconventional approach that sits perfectly with the band’s aesthetic—and in particular, truculent contrarian (and sometimes savage) frontman Stephen Malkmus. Pavements layers fact and fiction wonderfully, with parallel approaches that ought not be spoiled. Equal parts funny, nostalgic, celebratory, and self-deprecating—as it should be.
STEVE NEWALL
