One Island of Good, a documentary made by and about the Christchurch YMCA, will have its world premiere at NZIFF in Christchurch on Tuesday 8 August at the Isaac Theatre Royal.

In One Island of Good, local filmmaker Tim McInnes follows 22 young people (aged 13-16) traveling to Nepal under an alternative education programme which is struggling to survive.

These teenagers were all excluded from schools for bullying, selling weed and other misdemeanours. Unwanted by mainstream educators, YMCA staff and volunteers decide to take the kids to earthquake-stricken Nepal, hoping a sense of generosity and responsibility will teach the children skills for life.

 “In Nepal, you see the small staff own up to the strain. They struggle to temper the wild reflexes of charges described as ‘part five-year old, part MI5,’ yet find the wherewithal to rouse the better instincts the trip was designed to nurture. There are no feel-good turnarounds in this impressively frank film,” says NZIFF Director Bill Gosden.

Director Tim McInnes says One Island of Good was logistically complicated and at times defeating, but ultimately worth the headaches to bring a raw account of the lives of at-risk youth and their education specialists to the screen.

“There is a lot of stigma attached to these kids but you can’t just put them in a container and forget about them until they’re old enough to fend for themselves. We wanted to show people that there is merit in investing in our next generation. We wanted to give these kids a voice and show them what generosity looks like. The film was funded entirely by the YMCA but they gave us the freedom to provide an unflinching look at the state of alternative education in this country,” says filmmaker Tim McInnes.

The name of the film comes from a quote during an on-screen interview with Christchurch parenting commentator Nathan Mikaere Wallis, who says these children might come from terrible backgrounds but they need to be shown that on a continent of bad, there is one island of good they can cling to.

One Island of Good will premiere at the Isaac Theatre Royal on Tuesday 8 August at 8.15pm. Tickets for the screening will go on sale from 14 July through Ticketek. The full NZIFF programme will be available online and on the streets from 10 July.