Films by Collection

Staff Picks: Poppy Granger

After being chosen for an NZIFF internship in 2015 I couldn’t quite believe it!

I commuted down to Wellington for the duration of the 3 months. Although the travelling made it tiring at times, there was no doubt in my mind how much I wanted to be there. Some days I would pinch myself, and think "am I really surrounded by the most amazing films and people all day!?..how can this be real!”. I am looking forward to planning what will be a very long list of must see films this year

A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night

Ana Lily Amirpour

Our chador-wearing heroine walks the night-time streets of Bad City sinking her teeth into those who deserve to die. Outrageously languid, this new-school vampire movie is a triumphant first feature for Ana Lily Amirpour.

Partisan

Ariel Kleiman

The tension between father and wilful son is only intensified when papa is the leader of a murderous cult. An intelligently controlled drama highlighted by standout performances from Vincent Cassel and newcomer Jeremy Chabriel.

The Wolfpack

Crystal Moselle

In this stranger-than-fiction doco, we meet six brothers who have spent their entire lives locked by their father into their Manhattan apartment – where they watch movies obsessively and film their own ingenious re-enactments.

Love 3D

Gaspar Noé

“Gaspar Noé may be the only director in history who could make a two-and-a-quarter-hours-long pornographic film in 3D and then have it legitimately described as his least offensive picture to date.” — Robbie Collin, The Telegraph

Inherent Vice

Paul Thomas Anderson

“Paul Thomas Anderson has taken Thomas Pynchon’s novel about the death of the hippie counterculture and turned it, reasonably faithfully, into a surreally funny, anxious and beautiful film noir.” — The Telegraph

Mustang

Deniz Gamze Ergüven

“Five young sisters in a small coastal Turkish town come of age against a backdrop of sun, secrets, and socially-mandated sexual suppression in [this] heartfelt, beautifully performed debut feature.” — Jessica Kiang, The Playlist

The Colour of Pomegranates

Sayat Nova

Sergei Parajanov

A painstaking restoration of Sergei Parajanov’s 1969 arcane and hypnotising masterpiece, a highly unconventional biopic of the 18th-century Armenian poet Sayat-Nova recounted in a succession of opulently exotic tableaux.

James White

Josh Mond

Christopher Abbott and Cynthia Nixon are indelible as a Manhattan slacker careening out of control and his mother battling cancer in Josh Mond’s intensely immersive first feature.

Embrace of the Serpent

El abrazo de la serpiente

Ciro Guerra

A lone shaman inducts two European ethnographers into the mysteries of the Amazon in this breathtakingly photographed tale of exploration, vividly reimagined from the indigenous point of view.

The Lobster

Yorgos Lanthimos

Greek director Yorgos Lanthimos (Dogtooth) casts Colin Farrell, Rachel Weisz, John C. Reilly and Léa Seydoux in a surreal English-language fable set in a world where singles are forced to couple up or be turned into animals.

Tangerine

Sean Baker

Shot on iPhone and looking fantastic, Sean Baker’s R-rated comedy storms the streets, doughnut shops, brothels and clubs of West Hollywood as two transgender BFFs hunt down the ‘bitch’ who did them wrong.