The Dark Horse is coming to the NZIFF 2014

The Dark Horse is coming to the NZIFF 2014

NEW ZEALAND FILM THE DARK HORSE TO OPEN NZIFF 2014

The New Zealand International Film Festival (NZIFF) today announced that New Zealand film The Dark Horse will have its world premiere at the opening night of the Festival in 2014.
 

The Dark Horse will open NZIFF in Auckland on 17 July at the Civic Theatre and Wellington on 25 July at the Embassy Theatre. The film is directed by James Napier Robertson, produced by Tom Hern, and stars Cliff Curtis (Once Were Warriors, Whale Rider) and James Rolleston (Boy). The Dark Horse is an inspiring true story based on the life of a charismatic, brilliant but little-known New Zealand Hero and Chess champion - Genesis Potini (Gen).

A further 12 New Zealand films are today revealed for the 2014 programme, ten of which will have their world premieres at NZIFF. All feature-length films screening at NZIFF are New Zealand premieres.

“At NZIFF we’ve worked long and hard to create the best possible setting to celebrate and launch the work of our own filmmakers. We’ve been more than amply rewarded this year with the world premiere screening, on our opening night, of The Dark Horse, a film that we know is going to mean a lot to New Zealand audiences for years to come. We’re just as proud to be providing a rousing welcome home to Gerard Johnstone’s hilarious Housebound, which premiered to ecstatic audiences earlier this year at SXSW,” says NZIFF Director Bill Gosden.

“NZIFF will also premiere a further three local features, each of which demonstrates amazing inventiveness on a low budget, and eight New Zealand documentaries covering a diversity of subjects, both local and international,” says Gosden.

The films are:

The Dark Horse (Opening Night Auckland and Wellington, World Premiere)
New Zealand 2014/124 minutes/ M violence, offensive language, drug use
Dir James Napier Robertson
Be the first in the world to acclaim a moving new New Zealand film. Cliff Curtis is superb as the late Genesis Potini, the speed chess champion who passed on his gift to countless East Coast children.

Aunty and the Star People (World Premiere)
New Zealand 2014/82 minutes
Dir Gerard Smyth
In New Zealand, writer Jean Watson is an anonymous elderly woman living in a modest Wellington flat. In southern India she is revered as the famous ‘Jean Aunty’. Gerard Smyth’s documentary explores her fascinating double life.

Cap Bocage (World Premiere)
New Zealand 2014/73 minutes
Dir Jim Marbrook
Jim Marbrook, director of Mental Notes and the original Dark Horse documentary, takes us inside the long environmental campaign that followed the pollution of traditional Kanak fishing grounds in New Caledonia in 2008.

Erewhon (World Premiere)
New Zealand 2014/92 minutes
Dir Gavin Hipkins
For his first feature-length film the widely exhibited New Zealand photographer Gavin Hipkins invests a richly pictorial essay with the 21st-century resonance of Samuel Butler’s lively utopian satire Erewhon, written in 1872.
 

Everything We Loved
New Zealand 2014/100 minutes/Censors rating tbc
Dir Max Currie
A man, a woman and a four-year-old boy retreat to a house outside town. What are they hiding from? Debut writer/director Max Currie staggers the revelations to dramatic effect in this suspenseful psychological drama.

Hot Air (World Premiere)
New Zealand 2014/90 minutes
Dir Alister Barry, Abi King-Jones
In the years since New Zealand politicians began to grapple with climate change our carbon emissions have burgeoned. Alister Barry’s doco draws on TV archives and interviews with key participants to find out why.
 

Housebound
New Zealand 2014/107 minutes/Censors rating tbc
Dir Gerard Johnstone
Welcome home to the Kiwi horror house comedy that took SXSW by storm. Gerard Johnstone’s brilliant genre mash-up stars Rima Te Wiata, Morgana O’Reilly, Glen-Paul Waru and Cameron Rhodes.

Voices of the Land Nga Reo o te Whenua (World Premiere)
New Zealand 2014/96 minutes
Dir Paul Wolffram
Paul Wolffram’s fascinating and eloquent doco about M?ori instrumental traditions accompanies Richard Nunns and Horomona Horo as they perform in a series of remarkable South Island wilderness settings.

notes to eternity (World Premiere)
New Zealand 2014/150 minutes
Dir Sarah Cordery
Renowned critics of Israeli policies – Noam Chomsky, Norman Finkelstein, Sara Roy and Robert Fisk – provide personal substance and historical perspective to their arguments in this impressive film by New Zealander Sarah Cordery.

Orphans and Kingdoms (World Premiere)
New Zealand 2014/84 minutes/Censors rating tbc
Dir Paolo Rotondo
In writer/director Paolo Rotondo’s debut feature, three homeless teenagers break into a deluxe Waiheke Island home and find themselves caught in a tense psychodrama with the conflicted owner.
 

REALITi (World Premiere)
New Zealand 2014/95 minutes/Censors rating tbc
Dir Jonathan King
An up-and-coming media executive has good reason to question the very facts of his existence in this micro-budget sci-fi chiller from director Jonathan King (Black Sheep, Under the Mountain) and novelist Chad Taylor.

Te Awa Tupua: Voices from the River (World Premiere)
New Zealand 2014/67 minutes
Dir Paora Joseph
This beautiful new film from the director of Tatarakihi honours the power and poetry in the stories of Whanganui iwi, past and present, and their longstanding struggle to reclaim guardianship over their ancestral river.

Tumanako/Hope (World Premiere)
New Zealand 2014/90 minutes
Dir Susy Pointon
Many roads lead to the Hokianga in this engaging documentary portrait of several generations of inhabitants: local iwi, long-established farming families, and the alternative lifestylers of the 60s and 70s who put down roots and stayed.

NZIFF will begin in Auckland (17 July – 3 August), open in Wellington one week later (25 July – 10 August), then Christchurch and Nelson (6 – 24 August) and Dunedin (31 July – 17 August) before continuing to travel around New Zealand screening in Timaru, Gore, Hawke’s Bay, Hamilton, Tauranga, Palmerston North, Masterton, and New Plymouth.

NZIFF programmes will be available online and around town from June 24 in Auckland, and June 27 in Wellington. For Festival updates visit www.nziff.co.nz <http://www.nziff.co.nz>  and register to receive e-newsletters.