Our writers have been covering the NZIFF for nearly ten years now, and our body of film criticism wouldn’t be nearly as interesting without it. While there’s always something for everyone at the festival, we return each year determined to be challenged by our viewing choices, to reconnect with old iconoclasts, and to discover ambitious new auteurs. The following picks – some of which we’ve already seen, others we’re simply excited about – anticipate, above all, the out of the ordinary. www.lumiere.net.nz
Films — by Collection
- Dan Slevin
- David Larsen
- Florian Habicht
- Gemma Gracewood
- Jess Feast
- Jo Randerson
- Letterboxd
- Lindsay Shelton
- Peter Calder: From the Earth to the Stars
- RNZ: Simon Morris Chats to Bill Gosden
- Sandra Reid
- Staff Picks: Cass Hesom-Williams
- Staff Picks: Debbie Fish
- Staff Picks: Felicity Drace
- Staff Picks: Hayden Ellis
- Staff Picks: Jule Hartung
- Staff Picks: Kailey Carruthers
- Staff Picks: Leah Goffe Robertson
- Staff Picks: Lynn Smart
- Staff Picks: Megan Duffy
- Staff Picks: Melanie Rae
- Staff Picks: Michael McDonnell
- Staff Picks: Rebecca McMillan
- Staff Picks: Sarah Garven
- Staff Picks: Sarah McMullan
- Staff Picks: Vanessa Rushton
- The Lumière Reader
- The Pantograph Punch
- Wellington Film Society's Picks of NZIFF 2014
The Lumière Reader
At Berkeley
A thoroughly absorbing documentary exploring multiple facets of America’s most famously progressive public university, while students and administrators negotiate the gathering threats to accessible tertiary education.
Kumiko, the Treasure Hunter
Inspired by an urban legend that was itself inspired by the Coen brothers’ Fargo, filmmaking brothers David and Nathan Zellner have crafted a quixotic adventure story as beguiling as it is wondrously strange.
Leviathan
Direct from Competition in Cannes, the new film from the Russian director of The Return is an involving, magnificently envisaged and blackly funny tale of one man’s struggle in a densely corrupt world.
Under the Skin
Scarlett Johansson is an alien creature in human guise cruising Glasgow on a mysterious mission to lure young men. Jonathan Glazer’s eerie spellbinder amalgamates chilling fantasy with covertly filmed reality.
White God
Fehér isten
Hungarian director Kornél Mundruczó’s audacious drama, about how a young girl’s separation from her dog leads to a full-blown canine uprising, won the Un Certain Regard Prize at the Cannes Film Festival.
Winter Sleep
Kiş uykusu
Jane Campion’s jury awarded the Palme d’Or for Best Film at Cannes this year to this provocative and engrossing study of unwitting male pride and its fallout by Turkish director Nuri Bilge Ceylan.