Films by Language

English

20,000 Days on Earth

Iain Forsyth, Jane Pollard

The legend of Nick Cave is explored and amplified in this seductive, music-filled documentary created in collaboration with British filmmaker/artists Iain Forsyth and Jane Pollard. “Thrilling to behold.” — Time Out

52 Tuesdays

Sophie Hyde

A delicate and frequently touching debut drama, Australian director Sophie Hyde’s film, shot over a year of Tuesdays, traces a teenage girl’s explorations of her own sexual identity while her mother undergoes gender transition.

Alive Inside

Michael Rossato-Bennett

As dementia continues to affect millions worldwide, this rousing and emotional documentary reveals a remarkably simple, music-based breakthrough and shows how it has already transformed lives.

Alphabet

Erwin Wagenhofer

Austrian filmmaker Erwin Wagenhofer travels Europe and Asia to assemble evidence in favour of less regimented and competitive notions of education than those prevailing throughout much of the world (including New Zealand).

Art and Craft

Sam Cullman, Jennifer Grausman

Exploring the 30-year ‘career’ of a gifted fine art forger, Art and Craft delves into one of the most intriguing cases of deception in art history and its ramifications for the unhappy curators who fell for the fakes.

At Berkeley

Frederick Wiseman

A thoroughly absorbing documentary exploring multiple facets of America’s most famously progressive public university, while students and administrators negotiate the gathering threats to accessible tertiary education.

Aunty and the Star People

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.

The Babadook

Jennifer Kent

‘Baba-dook-dook-dook’ joins ‘Candyman’ and ‘Bloody Mary’ as words too terrifying to say, but too tempting not to, thanks to Australian writer-director Jennifer Kent’s startling and thought-provoking horror house thriller.

Big Men

Rachel Boynton

The many ambitions that come into play when a vast oil field is discovered off the coast of Ghana are revealed with amazing insight in this doco filmed over seven years, with access to executives, politicos and militants alike.

Borgman

Alex van Warmerdam

This delirious Dutch thriller, with shades of the comic and surreal, sees a vagrant trickster named Borgman insinuate himself into the lives of an arrogant and affluent upper class family, with darkly hilarious results.

Boyhood

Richard Linklater

Richard Linklater’s enthralling and moving drama of a boy’s progress from childhood to young manhood is truly unprecedented: it was shot over 12 years, capturing its star and his fellow cast as they themselves grew and changed.

Bringing It Home: Housebound

Join us for a free Meet the Filmmaker event with Housebound's Gerard Johnstone and Luke Sharpe on Saturday 02 August at Embassy Theatre's Black Sparrow Bar.

Cap Bocage

Jim Marbrook

Jim Marbrook, director of Mental Notes and the original Dark Horse doco, takes us inside the long environmental campaign that followed the pollution of traditional Kanak fishing grounds in New Caledonia in 2008.

Charlie’s Country

Rolf de Heer

Aussie maverick Rolf de Heer’s latest collaboration with the great Aboriginal actor David Gulpilil, after the folkloric Ten Canoes and historical The Tracker, is a moving picture of present-day life in Australia’s far north.

Cold In July

Jim Mickle

This edge-of-your-seat thriller keeps you off-balance with unexpected consequences when reluctant hero Michael C. Hall kills an intruder in his Texas home. Also starring Sam Shepard and a scene-stealing Don Johnson.

Concerning Violence

Göran Hugo Olsson

This powerful documentary draws on rarely seen interviews and action footage from African liberation struggles of the 60s and 70s to offer fresh insight into the nature and enduring legacy of colonialism.

The Congress

Ari Folman

Following his Oscar-nominated Waltz with Bashir, Ari Folman continues his foray into the world of animation with this audacious sci-fi film that combines live action Hollywood satire with dazzlingly surreal animation.

Consuming Spirits

Chris Sullivan

A comic nightmare of three strange characters connected by unsolved crimes and the local newspaper, Christopher Sullivan’s animated slice of small-town Americana is as far from family-friendly as animated features come.

The Darkside

Warwick Thornton

Samson & Delilah director Warwick Thornton invited Aboriginal people to share their experiences of the supernatural – and selected 13 of the most potent to be brought back to life by actors in this film.

Dior and I

Frédéric Tcheng

This fascinating and entertaining documentary takes us behind the scenes at the House of Dior as incoming designer Raf Simons conceives his first collection, and Dior’s highly skilled ateliers bring it to life.

DNA Dreams

Bregtje van der Haak

This Dutch documentary features a young generation of scientists in genomics research. What if we could identify the genes for human intelligence? Would a brave new world of improved human beings be waiting for us?

The Double

Richard Ayoade

A faceless bureaucrat (Jesse Eisenberg) and his suave doppelgänger (Jesse Eisenberg) compete for Mia Wasikowska’s attention in Richard Ayoade’s stylish, retro-future take on Dostoevsky.

Eastern Boys

Robin Campillo

A 50-something businessman gets more than he bargained for when he invites a young street hustler back to his apartment. Loaded with sexual tension, this superbly directed thriller never goes where you expect.

Enemy

Denis Villeneuve

Jake Gyllenhaal delivers two great performances in this compelling and creepy doppelgänger tale about a dishevelled university professor who spots his exact double performing in a movie, and tracks him down.

The Epic of Everest

J.B.L. Noel

Magnificent and haunting, the official record of the legendary 1924 Everest expedition screens in a superb restoration. Filmed by Captain John Noel, who accompanied doomed mountaineers George Mallory and Andrew Irvine.

Erewhon

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.

E-Team

Katy Chevigny, Ross Kauffman

When atrocities are committed in countries held hostage by ruthless dictators, Human Rights Watch sends in the E-Team, a collection of brave individuals who document war crimes and report them to the rest of the world.

Everything We Loved

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 its revelations to dramatic effect in this suspenseful psychological drama.

Exhibition

Joanna Hogg

A handsome modernist London townhouse has the power and presence of a third character in this closely observed dramatic portrait of its owners, an artist couple on the brink of change.

First Cousin Once Removed

Alan Berliner

Winner of the Best Documentary award at IDFA, director Alan Berliner’s film about his lifelong friend and mentor, the distinguished poet and translator Edwin Honig, becomes a profound study in identity and memory.

Flicks.co.nz Live Read: Braindead

Flicks.co.nz are chuffed to announce a unique one-off free event, a live script read of Kiwi splatter classic Braindead, written by Stephen Sinclair, Fran Walsh and Peter Jackson.

Folies Bergère

La ritournelle

Marc Fitoussi

Isabelle Huppert is touching and funny as a farmer’s wife who takes off to Paris on a whim in this poignant comedy of 50-something upheaval – and romance in unexpected places.

Force Majeure

Turist

Ruben Östlund

Swedish director Ruben Östlund’s Cannes sensation combines black comedy, social satire and probing psycho-drama as a model family comes apart on a skiing holiday in the French Alps.

Frank

Lenny Abrahamson

Michael Fassbender and Maggie Gyllenhall play fiercely avant-garde musicians in this weirdly celebratory satire of an obscure art rock band propelled via Twitter into the limelight.

The Galapagos Affair: Satan Came to Eden

Dayna Goldfine, Dan Geller

A flamboyant Viennese baroness and her two lovers bring mystery and murder to a lonely Pacific paradise in this lavishly archived, stranger-than-fiction documentary whodunit.

God Help the Girl

Stuart Murdoch

This long-awaited, massively crowd-funded pop musical – written, composed and directed by Belle and Sebastian’s Stuart Murdoch – stars a radiant Emily Browning as an up-and-coming Glasgow singer.

Goodbye to Language 3D

Adieu au langage

Jean-Luc Godard

In a dense and dazzling, disjunctive 3D mash-up of music, text, archive and image, the 83-year-old Jean-Luc Godard reflects on the significance, and possibly the decay, of language.

The Great Museum

Das grosse Museum

Johannes Holzhausen

This wryly observed, visually sumptuous documentary takes us behind the scenes at Vienna’s Art History Museum while staff prepare an ambitious renovation, reinstallation and rebranding of its palatial Kunstkammer galleries.

The Green Prince

Nadav Schirman

The incredible story of Mosab Hassan Yousef – the son of one of the founders of Hamas who became an informant for the Israeli secret service – is staged almost like an espionage thriller in this taut Sundance-winning doco.

Home

Nicholas McCarthy

If you’ve been there, you know: house-hunting can be the ultimate horror show. Home pumps up the suspense as it weaves the tale of an ambitious young realtor tasked with selling a house with a horrible past.

Hot Air

Alister Barry, Abi King-Jones

In the years since New Zealand politicians began to grapple with climate change our greenhouse gas emissions have burgeoned. Alister Barry’s doco draws on TV archives and interviews with key participants to find out why.

Housebound

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.

In Order of Disappearance

Kraftidioten

Hans Petter Moland

Norwegian noir with mordant gallows humour, this bloody tale of snowballing revenge reunites actor Stellan Skarsgård with director Hans Petter Moland ( Zero Kelvin, A Somewhat Gentle Man).

InRealLife

Beeban Kidron

Checking in with a generation of British kids who never knew life before social media, Beeban Kidron asks the rest of us to consider why anyone should worry about their being so totally plugged in.

The Internet’s Own Boy: The Story of Aaron Swartz

Brian Knappenberger

This lucid, punchy doco tells the story of Aaron Swartz, the tech genius who eschewed the rewards of Silicon Valley to become a net freedom activist and found himself targeted by the FBI.

Into the Void

Margaret Gordon

Long a mainstay of Christchurch’s underground music scene, Into the Void are ready for their close-up in this lively and eccentric film which documents two plus decades of heavy rocking, hard drinking and artistic endeavour.

Is the Man Who is Tall Happy?

Michel Gondry

Director Michel Gondry (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Mood Indigo) and philosopher-activist Noam Chomsky talk about life and language in a conversation gorgeously illuminated with Gondry’s hand-drawn animations.

It Follows

David Robert Mitchell

“With its marvellously suggestive title and thought-provoking exploration of sex, this indie chiller is a contemporary horror fan’s dream come true.” — Tim Robey, The Telegraph

Jimi: All Is By My Side

John Ridley

This provocative portrait of Jimi Hendrix as a fledgling rock legend features Outkast’s André Benjamin as the supremely gifted young guitarist in Swinging London. Directed by 12 Years a Slave screenwriter John Ridley.

Jimmy’s Hall

Ken Loach

The latest from veteran British social realist Ken Loach is a rousing, romantic retelling of the story of Irish folk hero James Gralton and his battle with the Catholic Church to run a popular dance hall and community centre.

Jodorowsky’s Dune

Frank Pavich

A riotous look behind the scenes of the greatest movie never made: Alejandro Jodorowsky’s proposed super-production of Frank Herbert’s cult sci-fi novel Dune, which was to star Orson Welles, Salvador Dali and Mick Jagger.

Joe

David Gordon Green

Nicolas Cage offers a strikingly well-rounded picture of a good-hearted tough guy facing down his demons in David Gordon Green’s tale of friendship and menace set deep in the Mississippi backwoods.

Killers

The Mo Brothers

Two deranged serial killers – one from Tokyo, the other from Jakarta – post their violent crimes online in a psychotic battle for notoriety in this slick, violent, but darkly humorous, psycho thriller from Indonesia’s Mo Brothers.

Kumiko, the Treasure Hunter

David Zellner

Inspired by an urban legend that was itself inspired by the Coen brothers’ Fargo, filmmaking brothers David and Nathan Zellner have crafted a quixotic adventure story as beguiling as it is wondrously strange.

Kung Fu Elliot

Matthew Bauckman, Jaret Belliveau

This surreal Slamdance-winning doco captures two years in the lives of a passionate amateur filmmaker, his supportive girlfriend and their outrageous cast – all trying to realise his dream of martial arts stardom.

The Lady from Shanghai

Orson Welles

Vintage film noir gloriously restored. Baroque plot complications engulf footloose Irish sailor Orson Welles on a Caribbean cruise with a crooked lawyer and his sultry wife Rita Hayworth (then Mrs Welles).

Land Ho!

Martha Stephens, Aaron Katz

Two 70-something buddies take a trip to Iceland in this surprisingly funny road movie. If Iceland’s not already on your bucket list, it will be now – possibly even with these two comedians in tow.

The Last of the Unjust

Le dernier des injustes

Claude Lanzmann

The Nazi-appointed Jewish leader who collaborated with the Germans and survived the Theresienstadt concentration camp defends his actions with compelling verve in Claude Lanzmann’s gripping new film, built around a 1975 interview.

Life After Beth

Jeff Baena

This charmingly off-beat, laugh-out-loud romantic comedy breathes new life into the zombie flick. Starring Parks & Recreation’s Aubrey Plaza as back-from-the-dead Beth and Dane DeHaan as her confused boyfriend.

Lilting

Hong Khaou

Ben Whishaw brings moving sensitivity to this lyrical tale of a young gay man tragically bereft of the love of his life and craving reconciliation with his lover’s old-school Chinese-Cambodian mother.

Locke

Steven Knight

Tom Hardy mesmerises as a man dealing with crisis on all fronts, making and taking frantic phone calls as he steers his BMW through the night. Steven Knight’s breathless feat of real-time drama is set entirely inside the car.

Looking for Light: Jane Bown

Luke Dodd, Michael Whyte

“A quiet, moving portrait of Jane Bown, the longstanding Observer photographer who has taken all those iconic portraits you know, but probably didn’t know she’d taken.” — Deborah Ross, The Spectactor

Love is Strange

Ira Sachs

John Lithgow and Alfred Molina are magnificent in Ira Sachs’ topical, moving and beautifully tender portrait of an ageing gay couple whose decision to marry after 39 years has complicated consequences.

The Lunchbox

Dabba

Ritesh Batra

Classic movie romance beautifully transposed to the rhythms and flavours of modern-day Mumbai. Hearts are kindled when a lunchbox, designed to delight the cook’s husband, is accidentally delivered to a more appreciative stranger.

Manakamana

Stephanie Spray, Pacho Velez

In this hypnotic observational documentary from Harvard’s Sensory Ethnography Lab, a fixed camera captures diverse travellers – from devout pilgrims to media-savvy metalheads – riding the gondola to and from a Hindu temple in Nepal.

Maps to the Stars

David Cronenberg

David Cronenberg’s gleefully toxic satire of Hollywood vanities stars Robert Pattinson, Mia Wasikowska, John Cusack, startling newcomer Evan Bird channelling Justin Beiber; and, in her Cannes-winning role, Julianne Moore.

Michael Smither: Music

Tony Hiles

A retrospective exhibition at the Pah Homestead presents an opportunity for painter and composer Michael Smither to survey his 40-year adventure in synaesthesia, expressing sound and colour together.

The Mule

Angus Sampson, Tony Mahony

A reluctant and seriously inept drug-runner finds himself in police custody with a belly full of heroin in this ingeniously gut-wrenching comedy of suspense set in the Melbourne crime-world of the 80s.

National Gallery

Frederick Wiseman

Frederick Wiseman, the grand old man of observational documentary, explores London’s National Gallery, looking in on backroom activities but more interested in examining the enduring power of the paintings themselves.

New Zealand’s Best 2014

For our third New Zealand’s Best short film competition Festival programmers Bill Gosden and Michael McDonnell viewed 115 submissions to make a shortlist of 12 from which filmmaker Andrew Adamson selected these six finalists.

Night Moves

Kelly Reichardt

Jesse Eisenberg, Peter Sarsgaard and Dakota Fanning are eco-activists in Kelly Reichardt’s skillful political thriller set in a world of shifting loyalties and tensely debated ethics.

notes to eternity

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.

Of Horses and Men

Hross í oss

Benedikt Erlingsson

In a rustic valley in Iceland, people and horses have lived together for centuries. This stunningly staged collection of tales tall and true explores the curious, complicated bonds between the two species.

Orphans & Kingdoms

Paolo Rotondo

In writer/director Paolo Rotondo’s debut feature, three teenagers on the run break into a deluxe Waiheke Island home and find themselves caught in a tense psychodrama with the conflicted owner.

The Overnighters

Jesse Moss

As richly peopled as a Steinbeck novel, Jesse Moss’ doco about the impact of the oil boom on a small North Dakota town follows the controversial campaign of a local priest to support the influx of homeless job-seekers.

Particle Fever

Mark A. Levinson

“This documentary accessibly conveys the science and the human drama behind the largest machine ever built – the Large Hadron Collider – and its crowning achievement, the discovery of the Higgs boson particle.” — Scientific American

Point and Shoot

Marshall Curry

The fascinating story of Matthew VanDyke, an American adventure junkie, whose travels across the Middle East led to his joining – and filming – the Libyan revolution. Best Doco, Tribeca Film Festival 2014

Print the Legend

Luis Lopez, Clay Tweel

“A technology that promises (some would say threatens) to permanently transform our lives gets compelling behind-the-scenes treatment in this skillful overview of the major players in the 3D printing industry.” — Justin Chang, Variety

Pulp: a Film about Life, Death & Supermarkets

Florian Habicht

NZer Florian Habicht’s acclaimed collaboration with Jarvis Cocker fixes the triumphant 2012 concert billed as Pulp’s last ever within a loving portrait of Sheffield and Sheffielders.

The Punk Singer

Sini Anderson

An inspiring close-up encounter with feminist punk rock legend Kathleen Hanna. Frontwoman for Bikini Kill throughout the 90s, then the hugely popular dance group Le Tigre, she’s a powerful presence onstage and off.

Reaching for the Moon

Flores raras

Bruno Barreto

The turbulent love story of American poet Elizabeth Bishop (Miranda Otto) and Brazilian architect Lota de Macedo Soares. “An empowering portrait of two highly gifted women who defy social convention.” – Hollywood Reporter

REALITi

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.

Regarding Susan Sontag

Nancy D. Kates

This documentary of novelist, critic and public intellectual Susan Sontag is rich with insight and biographical details about the defining impact on her life and work of key relationships with several highly accomplished women.

The Rover

David Michôd

Two unlikely travelling companions traverse the existential badlands of the Australian outback in Animal Kingdom director David Michôd’s intense and atmospheric picture of the lucky country gone feral.

The Salt of the Earth

Le sel de la terre

Wim Wenders, Juliano Ribeiro Salgado

The life and work of Sebastião Salgado, the undisputed master of monumental photojournalism, is explored in this wonderful doco, jointly directed by his son, Juliano Ribeiro Salgado, and German director Wim Wenders.

Script to Screen: The Writer's Room

Debut Synergy: Housebound

Join us for a special NZIFF Writers’ Room with Housebound’s writer, director and editor Gerard Johnstone (The Jaquie Brown Diaries) and producer Luke Sharpe (The Jaquie Brown Diaries) as they talk to filmmaker Jackie Van Beek (Go the Dogs) about the challenges of writing and making this stellar debut feature.

Shorts That Dance

This selection of local short films exploring a broad variety of dance styles features a charming samba documentary made in Brazil, a dreamlike ballet film and a spectacular hip-hop dance drama.

The Skeleton Twins

Craig Johnson

Saturday Night Live veterans Bill Hader and Kristen Wiig are brilliant as long-estranged twins who reunite in a crisis in this warm, often outrageously funny dramedy of late-30-something angst. Also starring Luke Wilson.

Snowpiercer

Bong Joon-ho

Korean auteur Bong Joon-ho’s much anticipated sci-fi epic, his first English language production, finally hits NZ screens in his original director’s cut. Starring Chris Evans, Tilda Swinton and Song Kang-ho.

Still Life

Uberto Pasolini

Actor Eddie Marsan is the steady, purposeful centre of this poignant, slightly stylised drama about a council worker whose job – locating the relatives of the unclaimed dead – is his strongest connection to the living.

Te Awa Tupua - Voices from the River

Paora Te Oti Takarangi Joseph

This beautiful new film from the director of Tatarakihi honours the longstanding struggle of Whanganui iwi to reclaim guardianship over their ancestral river.

Timbuktu

Abderrahmane Sissako

Set in the early days of the jihadist takeover of northern Mali in 2012, African director Abderrahmane Sissako’s Cannes Competition drama delivers a beautiful and deeply humane condemnation of religious intolerance.

Time is Illmatic

One9

Celebrating the 20th anniversary of his 1994 hip-hop masterpiece Illmatic, superstar MC Nas takes us on a trip down memory lane in this richly detailed documentary on his formative life and musical influences.

Tūmanako/Hope

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.

Ukraine Is Not a Brothel

Ukraina ne bordel

Kitty Green

In Australian filmmaker Kitty Green’s intimate, insider portrait, FEMEN, the controversial topless female protestors of Ukraine, talk about life, danger and confronting male domination in their country.

Under the Skin

Jonathan Glazer

Scarlett Johansson is an alien creature in human guise cruising Glasgow on a mysterious mission to lure young men. Jonathan Glazer’s eerie spellbinder amalgamates chilling fantasy with covertly filmed reality.

Virunga

Orlando von Einsiedel

An intrepid park ranger and his team protect an endangered population of mountain gorillas in the Congo from poachers, rebel militia and British oil exploration company SOCO International.

Voices of the Land: Ngā Reo o te Whenua

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.

Watchers of the Sky

Edet Belzberg

This rewarding documentary explores the work of the man who, in 1944, coined the word ‘genocide’, as well as four modern day activists who continue his crusade to establish international procedures to end such horrors.

We Come As Friends

Hubert Sauper

Hubert Sauper (Darwin’s Nightmare) exposes the international powers at work in the world’s newest country, South Sudan, in this astounding doco which received an award for ‘Cinematic Bravery’ at the Sundance Film Festival.

Welcome to New York

Abel Ferrara

The director of The Bad Lieutenant teams up with the fearless Gerard Dépardieu for the best, most inflammatory film either has made in years, a lurid tale of excess and obsession inspired by the downfall of Dominique Strauss-Kahn.

William Yang: Friends of Dorothy

Martin Fox

With myriad images and candid narration, renowned photographer William Yang presents his personal stories of queer Sydney and its famous Mardi Gras through the 70s to now.

Winter Sleep

Kiş uykusu

Nuri Bilge Ceylan

Jane Campion’s jury awarded the Palme d’Or for Best Film at Cannes this year to this provocative and engrossing study of unwitting male pride and its fallout by Turkish director Nuri Bilge Ceylan.

The Young and Prodigious T.S. Spivet 3D

L’extravagant voyage du jeune et prodigieux T.S. Spivet

Jean-Pierre Jeunet

The director of Amelie and Delicatessen takes to 3D and delights with his abundant visual wit in this tale of a ten-year-old boy genius’s attempts to understand his weird family and the even weirder wider world.