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.

In this dark and absurd found footage mockumentary, Morris Fubbins ventures deep into the New Zealand bush in search of his missing father, who he believes was kidnapped by a mythical creature.

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.