Aotearoa New Zealand

Premiering at Sundance earlier this year, Paloma Schneideman’s coming-of-age debut launches our festival with a tender portrait of 14-year-old Sid, as she tentatively traverses insecurity, identity and desire during the summer of 2006.

40 years ago, New Zealand’s most loved cartoon strip was adapted into our first-ever animated feature and the result broke the box office and captured the hearts of a far more innocent nation.

Gerd Pohlmann offers a timely doc tribute to politician Jim Anderton as a long-haul fighter for Labour’s welfare-based values, against a wave of neoliberal deregulation that fundamentally changed New Zealand politics.

Rugby's first global superstar was also one of its most private — a shy, gentle giant caught between two worlds, whose story mirrors Aotearoa's own coming of age.

Dunedin’s Robert Sarkies ventured into weightier territory after Scarfies, reckoning with a defining tragedy of gun violence that rocked Aotearoa’s sense of security in his chilling but sensitively measured sophomore feature.