Perfect Pictures
By Theo Macdonald
Let’s cut to The Chase (Arthur Penn, 1966). For the past five years, the New Zealand International Film Festival has been lost in The Fog (John Carpenter, 1980). Long-term leader Bill Gosden passed away in 2020, 2021’s Auckland leg was rudely cancelled by COVID-19 (We still haven’t seen Memoria), and half the festival’s programme team resigned earlier this year.
Nonetheless, through some strange Magic (Richard Attenborough, 1978) and the guiding hand of incoming artistic director Paolo Bertolin, 2024’s NZIFF has the best line-up we’ve seen yet.
Every film in this year’s festival looks mouthwatering, like the movie festival version of an all-you-can-eat Pizza Hut restaurant — the way you remember those meals, not the way they actually were. From the riveting body horror of The Substance (Meat Lovers), to irrefutable classic Paris, Texas (Hawaiian) and ecological drama Evil Does Not Exist (Supreme?), this year’s festival truly has something for everyone, even mum and dad (In Restless Dreams: The Music of Paul Simon).
The five movies below aren’t the five you HAVE TO SEE. NZIFF 2024 has too good a spread for us to be that bullish. Here are five movies we’ll be buying tickets to. Maybe we’ll see you there?
The Seed of the Sacred Fig
Iranian filmmaker Mohammad Rasoulof ’s ferocious political anthology There Is No Evil condemned the ugliness of capital punishment through four humble dramas about ordinary Iranians marshalled into the roles of perpetrator and victim, state and revolutionary. The Seed of the Sacred Fig — for which Rasoulof has been sentenced to eight years in prison — finds similar ferocity in one typical family’s divided responses to the 2022 protests following the death of the young woman Mahsa Amini in police custody.
The People’s Joker
Featuring cameos from Tim Heidecker and Bob Odenkirk, alternative comedian Vera Drew’s audacious parody tears apart tired superhero clichés to reveal a bombastic tale of trans-self-acceptance. For its cheeky copyright infringement, The People’s Joker has been legally barred from release many times over. It’s a Marvel we’re getting to see it here!
Ryuichi Sakamoto:Opus
Sakamoto’s music has been said to describe emotions we don’t yet have words for. The musician’s son Neo Sora — attending NZIFF 2024 in person — directs this starkly intimate documentary of his father’s final concert, performed on a Yamaha grand piano a few months before his death from cancer, and incorporating reworked compositions from throughout Sakamato’s extraordinary career.
Dahomey
French-Senegalese director Mati Diop’s documentary follows the repatriation to modern-day Benin of 26 royal treasures stolen from the Kingdom of Dahomey during the French colonial period (1872–1960). Time Out’s Stephen A. Russell writes, “Musing on destiny, place and belonging, [Dahomey] spans centuries in the blink of a statue’s eye.”
Birdeater
Harking back to Aussie chiller Wake in Fright, Birdeater is the twisted tale of a young woman brought along to her fiancé’s stag do; a horrifying, ominous trip where any simple moment can become a trap set to disarm and disquiet.
