Imago (2025)

Directed by Déni Oumar Pitsaev

Winner of the L’Oeil d’Or Prize (also called the Golden Eye) for Best Documentary at this year’s Cannes Film Festival. It also scooped the French Touch Prize from the Cannes Critics' Week jury

Chechnya is just over the mountain from the Georgian valley of Pankisi, but there is no direct route, and it might as well be a world away for the refugees who fled during the wars and have now made new homes as close as they are able to the homeland they so desperately miss. Déni, who dreamed as a child of building a treehouse in Chechnya, has inherited a small patch of land in Pankisi, and travels there from France with sketched out architectural plans to scope out whether he can feasibly construct a residence there.  

As the call to prayer sounds out throughout the day from the local mosques, and the trees teem with natural life, he reconnects with relatives and must reconcile the gulf in values that has grown between them with an unmistakable sense of recognition and belonging, and the traumatic fear and persecution that have indelibly marked the family’s history. 

Cutting Through Rocks (2025)

Ozak ulalar

Directed by Sara Khaki, Mohammadreza Eyni

Documentary Grand Jury Prize Winner at Sundance

The first elected councilwoman in her conservative Iranian village, Sara Shahverdi is a landowner, wears men’s clothing under her abaya, and rides a motorcycle. Having beaten the odds, she is a role model to young girls in the village and living proof that child marriage is not the only option for them. However, not everyone is happy with her modern views – many villagers adhere to traditional gender role expectations and believe that women have no place holding positions of power.

“Shaverdi is a remarkable woman… flawed but passionate, tough, and resilient human being – the rock-cutter of the title.” Jonathan Holland, Screen Daily

Peacock (2024)

Pfau - Bin ich echt?

Directed by Bernhard Wenger

Critics’ Week Award, Venice Film Festival 2024

“Peacock or Chameleon – one or the other, at the same time, or both at different times? That is the dilemma faced by Matthia in his job at Rent-a-Friend agency, ‘The Good Companion’. Here, he has mastered the art of impersonation and is happy to oblige anyone. 

But over time, Matthias is unable to distinguish between his real life and the dictates of his work, leading to a breakdown in his relationship with Sophia and the loss of his own personality. On one level a comedy, on another a satire, Peacock draws the viewer into a journey of introspection, reflection and questioning of who they really are.” — Mutale Kampuni, Film Ireland Magazine

My Father’s Shadow (2025)

Directed by Akinola Davies Jr

Camera d’Or Special Mention winner at Cannes Film Festival

The first Nigerian film to screen in the Cannes official selection, My Father’s Shadow is set in 1993 during Nigeria’s first election after a decade of military rule. Two boys, played by real life brothers Godwin Egbo and Chibuike Marvelous Egbo, travel to the thriving metropolis with their father on a day when political tensions are reaching boiling point. 

With much of the story told through the eyes of the children, the film follows the simultaneously stern, troubled and loving titular father as he navigates the city chaos, trying to collect a debt before it’s too late.  

“A rich, heartfelt and rewarding movie. British-Nigerian filmmaker Akinola Davies Jr makes a strong directorial debut with this deft and intriguing tale.” Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian

Kontinental ‘25 (2025)

Directed by Radu Jude

Winner of Best Screenplay at the Berlin International Film Festival

Radu Jude is now recognised as Romania’s most outrageous and biting satirist, after a string of inventive, anarchic films that take aim at society’s historical amnesia and the indignities of modern-day capitalism. In his latest pitch-black, merciless comedy, which was shot on an iPhone in just ten days and won raves at the Berlin International Film Festival, he reckons with the greed and hypocrisy that have fuelled the European Union’s housing crisis.

Orsolya, a bailiff, is called to evict a homeless man from the dingy cellar where he had been squatting, in the city of Cluj, in Transylvania. His suicide leaves her plagued by guilt – and grasping at external validation and reassurance by any means necessary to free her of any sense of complicity in the death.

Simon of the Mountain (2024)

Simón de la montaña

Directed by Federico Luis

Critics’ Week Grand Prize, Cannes Film Festival 2024

Simon, a troubled and lonely young man, leads a melancholy existence with his mother and her partner in the Argentinian Andes. With tension at home, Simon searches for his comfort zone by befriending a group of mentally disabled youths. Despite their challenges, the teenagers’ tenacious attitudes give Simon a fresh outlook on life, and as he grows closer to them, he devises a plan to fit into a society he has never felt part of.

Director Federico Luis explores the challenges of adolescence and disability in his subtle yet moving first feature. Utilising mostly non-professional actors and experimenting with sound using a hearing aid, the film is intimate and personal and invites the audience into Simon’s perplexing world in this novel take on the coming-of-age genre.

One of Those Days When Hemme Dies (2025)

Hemme’nin öldüğü günlerden biri

Directed by Murat Fıratoğlu

Special Horizons Jury Prize, Venice Film Festival 2024

Under the scorching sun of the Anatolian summer, farm workers scatter and salt tomatoes to dry. In the striking opening act of Murat Fıratoğlu’s debut film, we experience the unbearable heat and the pouring sweat of the labourers as if we were there with them. Then, as an insignificant squabble turns into a furious brawl, farmhand Eyüp vows to kill foreman Hemme. Fueled by the heat, Eyüp’s anger seems uncontrollable and tragedy looms.

Yet, Fıratoğlu, who is a lawyer by trade and who wrote, directed and starred (as Eyüp) in this self-financed no budget debut, leads us down an unexpected path…

Awarded at Venice and hailed as the best Turkish film of 2024, One of Those Days When Hemme Dies is a rare cinematic gem whose disarming charm will puzzle you, question you and ultimately conquer you.

Hear more on NZIFF’s hidden gems from Artistic Director Paolo Bertolin in the video below: