My list begins with eight I have seen – including one of my all-time favourite movies. The eight films that follow - seven of them from Cannes - are the ones I’m most excited about getting to see at NZIFF. Finally, Lost and Beautiful and All These Sleepless Nights have been among the year’s most particular, strange and unexpected cinematic pleasures. Both blur the lines between fiction and documentary. Both are about memory. I was mesmerised as I watched them and have not been able to shake them since.
Films — by Collection
- Cactuslab
- Dominic Corry
- Dunedin Film Society: Raphael Richter-Gravier
- Letterboxd
- Staff Picks: Andrew Harrison
- Staff Picks: Ant Timpson
- Staff Picks: Bill Gosden
- Staff Picks: Caroline Palmer
- Staff Picks: Cianna Canning
- Staff Picks: Collette Wright
- Staff Picks: Felicity Drace
- Staff Picks: Hedda ten Holder
- Staff Picks: Jo Scott
- Staff Picks: Kailey Carruthers
- Staff Picks: Kate McGee
- Staff Picks: Lynn Smart
- Staff Picks: Melanie Rae
- Staff Picks: Michael McDonnell
- Staff Picks: Nic Marshall
- Staff Picks: Nick Paris
- Staff Picks: Rebecca McMillan
- Staff Picks: Rosie Jones
- Staff Picks: Sandra Reid
- Staff Picks: Tim Wong
- Wellington Film Society
Staff Picks: Bill Gosden
![Neon Bull](/assets/resized/sm/upload/i8/lm/pk/8p/foto_Mateus_sa_2%20KEY-0-520-0-390-crop.jpg?k=ad95f7d49b)
Neon Bull
Boi neon
The most erotically charged film of the year offers a wild, sensual look at life behind the scenes on a backcountry Brazilian rodeo circuit where the reality of human desire sidesteps gender stereotypes every time.
![A Quiet Passion](/assets/resized/sm/upload/yx/vz/gr/qk/AQP_01256_CROP%20KEY%20OPTION%202-0-520-0-390-crop.jpg?k=4364a1e221)
A Quiet Passion
Cynthia Nixon, Jennifer Ehle and Keith Carradine star in Terence Davies’ lively, witty and ultimately intensely moving dramatisation of the sheltered life of 19th-century New England poet Emily Dickinson.
![After the Storm](/assets/resized/sm/upload/bm/yh/zd/89/KEY%20AFTER_THE_STORM_-_PHOTO_10_-_c_2016__FUJI_TELEVISION_NETWORK_BANDAI_VISUAL_AOI_Pro._Inc.GAGA_CORPORATION-0-520-0-390-crop.jpg?k=e2ce4ece5c)
After the Storm
Umi yori mo mada fukaku
A formerly successful novelist tries to reconnect with his ex-wife and young son in this affectionate, shrewdly observed drama of family life from Japan’s unassuming master, Kore-eda Hirokazu (Our Little Sister).
![Aquarius](/assets/resized/sm/upload/q3/6r/ef/sa/aquarius%202%20NEW%20KEY-0-520-0-390-crop.jpg?k=6f1f5eeb92)
Aquarius
Brazilian actress Sonia Braga has the role of her life in this engrossing and richly surprising portrait of a fiercely intelligent and independent woman fighting to save the apartment she loves from demolition.
![Elle](/assets/resized/sm/upload/42/ea/sl/7m/Elle_03_rgb%20KEY-0-520-0-390-crop.jpg?k=0195efe0e3)
Elle
Genre subversive Paul Verhoeven, director of Basic Instinct and Black Book, teams up with the great Isabelle Huppert to craft this provocative, blackly comic thriller.
![Neruda](/assets/resized/sm/upload/3m/k1/kt/1l/neruda-gael-garcia-bernal%20KEY-0-520-0-390-crop.jpg?k=256fed2dd7)
Neruda
Not your conventional biopic, this enthralling dramatic exploration of the legacy of Chilean poet Pablo Neruda conjures up a fiction in which he is pursued into political exile by an incompetent detective played by Gael García Bernal.
![Paterson](/assets/resized/sm/upload/v5/2a/1i/b5/_c__2016_-_Mary_Cybulski%20KEY-0-520-0-390-crop.jpg?k=be62c03a33)
Paterson
Direct from Cannes, Jim Jarmusch’s beautifully calibrated ode to art and ordinariness stars Adam Driver as a New Jersey bus driver who writes poetry in his downtime and Golshifteh Farahani as his cupcake chef wife.
![Toni Erdmann](/assets/resized/sm/upload/2v/5n/f1/ho/ToniErdmann_Still_01-SandraHuller_PeterSimonischek_credit%20Komplizen%20Film%20KEY-0-520-0-390-crop.jpg?k=1dcf648294)
Toni Erdmann
Hailed at Cannes as a brilliantly original comic masterpiece, Austrian writer/director Maren Ade’s epic of parent-child dysfunction centres on a father assailing his uptight corporate daughter with crazy pranks.