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.

Direct from Competition in Cannes where it scored the Grand Prix, this radiant Indian drama follows two nurses looking for love but finding sisterhood in the vibrant, heaving 20 million plus populace of Mumbai.

Léa Seydoux and George MacKay’s fatal attraction endures across space and time in Bertrand Bonello’s audacious Lynchian reflection on love and obsession, mixing sci-fi, melodrama, and horror across three different time frames.

Equal parts picturesque, creepy and batshit crazy, with a stunning performance from Euphoria’s Hunter Schafer in her first feature lead role, this riotous horror flick proves to be raucously entertaining and refreshingly unpredictable.

In 2021, 26 plundered artefacts from the Kingdom of Dahomey are returned to the modern day nation of Benin. Mati Diop’s dreamlike documentary skilfully examines the debate surrounding the repatriation of stolen cultural treasures.

Reclusive auteur Terrence Malick’s sophomore effort, beautifully restored in 4K, is a bewitching, visually ravishing pre-World War I fable of passion and betrayal on the sun-drenched Texas prairie.

Sensitive and funny, this semi-autobiographical film follows 13-year-old Chris Wang as he grows up in diaspora, flirting through AOL emojis and navigating family life, with beautiful small details that feel painfully realistic and true to life. 

Aaron Schimberg’s darkly comic feature from indie powerhouse A24 sees a man with facial tumours make a Faustian pact to change his appearance, only to discover good looks can’t buy happiness.

Ryûsuke Hamaguchi follows up his Oscar-winning film Drive My Car with a modern eco-fable that provides a gorgeous meditation on humanity’s relation to nature and an unnerving commentary on the price of progress.

An energetic re-envisioning of Baroque music through the lens of the fiery female composers whose revolutionary work was concealed throughout history.

Brutal, enraging and heartrending, Polish writer-director Agnieszka Holland’s controversial take on the Polish-Belarusian border crisis serves as a startling call to arms in the face of a little-seen humanitarian crisis.

Christchurch-born filmmaker Jonathan Ogilvie returns home for this evocative coming-of-age story that brilliantly captures the feeling of growing up weird in the Garden City. Starring Ed Oxenbould, Márton Csókás and featuring Stella Bennett aka Benee in her acting debut, Head South will be our Opening Night film for the Christchurch leg of the festival.

A sensitive vampire meets a depressed teenage boy in this deadpan romantic comedy about two loners connecting.

Gunge, goons, and girls with unbreakable psychic bonds are your new late-night obsession in this unsettling fable about what happens when you get offered a chance at a fantasy, but choose to settle for reality.

Paul Simon is that rare popular artist who has produced vital music across seven decades. Drawing on archives and intimate new footage, this comprehensive documentary examines the creative career of a lifelong seeker.

Acclaimed playwright Annie Baker ruminates on the evolving relationship between an 11-year-old misfit and her single mother during the summer holidays in this intimately observed debut feature.

Belfast’s own Beastie Boys become unlikely figureheads of the Irish Language Act in this madcap biopic of sex, drugs, and Gaelic rap.

Paul Wolffram’s urgent documentary takes us into the remote highlands of Papua New Guinea and one indigenous woman’s fight against the insidious influence of sanguma – sorcery violence.

Defying the traditional rock ’n’ roll narrative, this is the story of how a young Australian hard rock band developed a political conscience and brought their audience along with them.

On the eve of a move towards greater public health data reporting, a medical error throws life into a spin for a respected surgeon and her surgical team; the downward spiral threatening all in her orbit.

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.

A lonely but fiercely determined 70-year-old widow takes second chance on love in this charming and funny yet politically subversive romance from Iran.

Lucy Lawless makes her directorial debut with a raucous documentary exploring the life of another warrior princess – fierce and fearless Kiwi war video journalist Margaret Moth.

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.

Saoirse Ronan brings Amy Liptrot’s award-winning memoir to the screen in this ardently moving portrait of addiction recovery set in the majestic Orkney Islands of Scotland.

Starring the late great Harry Dean Stanton in his most iconic role, Wim Wenders’ newly restored modern classic delivers one of the definitive outsider views of America.

Vera Drew lays her soul bare with this fever-dream of a DC Universe parody that takes us through the trippiest and most monumental moments of her life and gender realisation.

Julio Torres makes a bold directorial debut with a bright, colourful and unique take on the American dream featuring a delightfully manic performance from Tilda Swinton.

Winner of multiple awards at Sundance this powerful and heartwarming documentary reveals an outwardly introverted gamer’s vibrant secret cyberlife following his death from a degenerative muscular disease.

Opus is a starkly intimate, self-performed elegy capturing a dying man’s genius.

A conflicted family implodes as protests spread throughout Iran, Mohammad Rasoulof’s courageous and urgent film delivers a bold middle finger to the totalitarian regime of his homeland.

A corrections officer sees her placid work life thrown into disarray upon the arrival of a new inmate, a mysterious figure from her past, in this sophomore feature from Gustav Möller.

Direct from wowing audiences at Cannes, Coralie Fargeat’s magnificent shocker closes out this year’s Festival in style and lays down her marker to take the crown as the new queen of carnage with this wildly entertaining feminist body-horror feast.

Driven by a captivating central performance, this unsettling Oscar-nominated classroom thriller thoughtfully probes the grey area of student care versus culpability, and to what degree our systems promote or constrain our humanity.

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.