Indigenous

“Agent of happiness” Amber sets out on a cross-country road trip surveying the satisfaction of the Bhutanese public, as this crowd-pleasing doco questions whether the Himalayan country really is the happiest place on Earth.

Even if you’re not a fan of heavy metal, you can’t help but admire Alien Weaponry. If not for their rise to fame on an international scale, then for being the first band of the genre to sing in te reo Māori.

Is “political freedom” worth the cost of familial or social discord? When Bhutan’s king abdicates in favour of democratic reform, a strange series of events unfolds, where the old and the new collide in wondrous fashion.

The year’s best New Zealand short films as chosen by guest selector, Gerard Johnstone.

Support these Māori and Pasifika films and vote for your favourites at screenings all across the motu.

Filmed in Palestine between 2019 and 2023, No Other Land is documentary film performing its calling. An urgent and irresistible reminder as to why we choose to understand the world, and others, through cinema.

Winning the Special Jury Prize at SXSW this year, Josephine Stewart-Te Whiu’s electric debut launches our festival with a fiery trio of delinquent schoolgirls railing against the colonial system in 1950s New Zealand.