The highly anticipated Past Lives, EO, Afire, Saint Omer and Beyond Utopia are the first of what promises to be a fabulous line-up in this year's New Zealand International Film Festival.
NZIFF will open in Auckland on Wednesday 19 July 2023, followed by Wellington on the following Thursday 27 July, and Dunedin and Christchurch on 3 and 10 August respectively. The remaining centres will follow with the festival ending on 10 September.
Remember that Wellington, Auckland and Christchurch multi-trip passes include preferential early booking for films. Buy your passes here.
PAST LIVES
Celine Song’s gorgeous, intensely bittersweet romance ruminates on the lives and loves of two childhood friends fleetingly reunited after decades apart – a remarkable debut feature that was the talk of Sundance.
EO
Strap in for an unforgettable, visionary trip, an Oscar-nominated journey that stunned Cannes with its cinematic flair. Your hosts? An octogenarian Polish auteur – and a donkey.
AFIRE
Christian Petzold braids desire, artistic insecurity and the looming threat of climate change in his smouldering comedy of manners set over the course of a hot summer holiday on a Baltic coastline beset with forest fires.
SAINT OMER
Drawing on a tragic true event, this multi-awarded and mesmerising, stately courtroom drama upends notions of race, cultural heritage, class and female agency, and the mythologies and social prejudices underpinning received ideas.
BEYOND UTOPIA
In this astonishing, edge-of-the-seat chronicle, the camera follows audacious, high-risk quests to escape from North Korea, and the man who plans them, with a rare intimacy and emotional power.
The full programme and schedule details will be available at the end of June.