Staff Picks: Sandra Reid

My usual tack, to begin honing a list of a dozen films out of the hundreds seen during the past year, is to use Cannes as a prism. It’s the festival where I most recently saw films and they’re therefore fresh in mind. This does mean my list often tilts heavily in that direction and neglects other splendours. As I can’t fit all our wonderful Cannes crop on my list, I suggest checking out The Best of Cannes at NZIFF on the News page as a guide (with special mention to Birds of Passage, Border, Burning, Cold War, Donbass, Girl and Le Grand Bal – oh, the list could go on). I would love to be in Auckland celebrating the festival’s 50th year there with the NZIFF Classics – although other cities also get to share some of the love in the Retro selection – all of which are high on my To At Last See or To See Again If I Ever Get the Chance lists. And I’m looking forward to many more, including films from Aotearoa that I’ve yet to have the pleasure of seeing – can I squeeze in a cheer for Bludgeon here? It’s doubtful I’ll take up the sport it depicts but I loved my encounter with this documentary’s valiant knights. My Must Sees begin and end with two of the first films I saw last year when setting out on the 2019 selection process, both mesmerising, albeit in very different ways, and firmly embedded in my mind and will be for sometime yet.