As the 20,579 ticket-holder left our final, added screening of Phil Keoghan’s Le Ride at the Isaac Theatre Royal, the NZIFF team was too exhausted to toast the end of our 40^th Christchurch season  – and now we are waking up to the long debrief that leads to NZIFF 2017! The dates are already set for 4 August to 20 August, in case you were wondering.

Hit documentaries were a defining feature of NZIFF once again, with Opening Night sensation Poi E: the Story of Our Song and Le Ride playing to turn-away business. Could it be mere coincidence that both films were directed by sons of Christchurch? Phil and Louise Keoghan and their team travelled from L.A. for their barnstorming World Premiere at the Isaac Theatre Royal – and were rewarded with three full houses. (If you missed out, negotiations are currently underway with a potential distributor for the film.)

Other NZIFF hits in Christchurch included two more docos, Embrace and The Eagle Huntress (the perfect choice on a soaking wet Saturday afternoon) and the wordless, animated fable The Red Turtle. I, Daniel Blake and the popular Captain Fantastic will soon follow Poi E into release.

Other Kiwi docos were presented at Hoyts Northlands by visiting filmmakers. Confronting conventional pieties about disability, ex-pat Heath Cozens travelled from New York to present his Doglegs to a tiny but intensely engaged audience. Elle, the most high-profile provocation on the programme, drew a few cries of protest and many more expressions of admiration, some of it admittedly reluctant. (Eleanor Woodhouse and Doug Dillaman review Elle for The Pantograph Punch.)

Harold Lloyd’s Safety Last! provided an exhilarating Live Cinema outing with the Christchurch Symphony Orchestra. “90 minutes of pure joy,” proclaimed The Press review, applauding a superb performance by the orchestra, under the baton of Marc Taddei. Our own joy was sadly undermined by the dramatic decline in audience numbers after the full house at our inaugural Live Cinema outing last year. 

With as much as 90% of our annual income derived from box office, NZIFF is very much an audience-driven event. We’re very keen to have your feedback whether or not you made it to NZIFF this year. After the triumph of 2015, and amazingly positive feedback throughout the season it still proved to be a tricky year - was it the winter snap or something else? We are determined to make NZIFF 2017 even better so we’ll be paying close attention to your thoughts… once we’ve had some sleep!

Please email us at festival@nziff.co.nz with your feedback, or for newsletter subscribers please complete the survey emailed out on the 1 September.