WIFT NZ - World Premiere of The Rehearsal announced as NZIFF 2016 Centrepiece Presentation

NZIFF is thrilled to present the World Premiere of Alison Maclean's hotly anticipated adaptation of Eleanor Catton's debut novel The Rehearsal. The film features lots of WIFT members so be sure to see a sceening if you can.

The film stars James Rolleston in the role of Stanley, a naive newcomer drawn to the city by his passion to make it on stage. He joins a class of drama students, while romancing young Isolde (played by Ella Edward) outside of school. Michelle Ny, Marlon Williams and Kieran Charnock provide vivid support to the young principals, alongside Kerry Fox as Hannah, the school's grandstanding senior tutor.

The Rehearsal will screen as the centrepiece presentation of the Auckland NZIFF programme on Saturday 23 July at the Civic Theatre. Further festival screening dates will be confirmed for Wellington, Dunedin and Christchurch.

"The Rehearsal mounts an enticing inquisition of performance, identity and moral anxiety with resonance far beyond its hothouse setting. Like the novel, the film (co-scripted with Emily Perkins) is as attentive to the misleading effect youthful nerve can have on the 'mature' as it is to the crises the teachers so blithely incite in the taught. It's also its own sharp, original thing, a film by Alison Maclean, alive with ambiguity and cinematic verve." says NZIFF Director Bill Gosden.