Films — by Collection

Staff Picks: Michael McDonnell

Being a programmer for NZIFF, I’m lucky enough to have seen a good portion of the selection already. The absolute highlight has to be La Flor. I’ll admit to some trepidation sitting down to watch a 14-hour film, but before long I was hanging out to see the next episode. Under the Silver Lake and We Are Little Zombies play similarly fast and loose with narrative conventions and are all the more enjoyable for it. It’s an extremely strong year for documentaries and amongst the most entertaining for quite different reasons are Cold Case Hammarskjöld, Martha: A Picture Story and You Don’t Nomi. Great titles from Cannes I’ve managed to see include The Orphanage, Song Without a Name and The Whistlers, while I’m looking forward to catching up on titles like Bacurau, Portrait of a Lady on Fire and Sorry We Missed You during the festival. — Michael McDonnell, Programme Manager

The Art of Self-Defense

Riley Stearns

One of the most buzzed titles from this year’s SXSW fest, this jet-black deadpan comedy deploys a killer ensemble of Jesse Eisenberg, Alessandro Nivola and Imogen Poots to deadly effect.

Martha: A Picture Story

Selina Miles

Meet New York’s legendary-yet-unlikely street art photographer who influenced a whole generation of graffiti artists – and at the age of 75, is still capturing beauty on the fringes, with verve.

The Nightingale

Jennifer Kent

Winner of the Special Jury Prize at the Venice Film Festival, Jennifer Kent’s brutal revenge saga is an unrelenting reckoning with white male oppression – and not for the faint of heart.

Under the Silver Lake

David Robert Mitchell

Deadbeat slacker Andrew Garfield delves into the labyrinthine mysteries of La La Land on the hunt for a missing girl in David Robert Mitchell’s oddball neo-noir thriller.

The Whistlers

La Gomera

Corneliu Porumboiu

Breathing new life into the Romanian New Wave, Corneliu Porumboiu crafts a rollicking genre movie set in sun-soaked Spain, where the best laid plans of a bent cop hinge on learning a secret local whistling dialect.