Eight documentaries Announced for Whānau Mārama: New Zealand International Film Festival

Whānau Mārama: New Zealand International Film Festival (NZIFF) has today announced eight enriching and enlightening documentaries selected to screen at the 2023 festival.

Screened in Official Selection Director’s Fortnight at Cannes 2022, De Humani Corporis Fabrica examines the extraordinary landscape of the human body through a collage of medical imagery and bustling scene reportage from five hospitals in northern Paris.

From Blackfish (NZIFF 2013) director Gabriela Cowperthwaite comes The Grab, an eye-opening investigation into the money, influence, and alarming covert efforts of governments and private investors to gain control of the most vital resources on the planet – food and water.

In Ennio Giuseppe Tornatore (The Best Offer NZIFF 2013) pays tribute to legendary composer Ennio Morricone and his prolific career that spanned over seven decades and included the scores to more than 70 award-winning films.

From the Academy Award-winning producers of Searching for Sugar Man (NZIFF 2012) comes Merkel, an engrossing look at the life and career of Angela Merkel, the first female Chancellor of Germany.

Kokomo City explores the lives of four black trans sex workers in New York and Atlanta, a film intended to pay as much attention to fun and beauty as to trauma and violence yet made tragic by the murder of one of its leads just three months after the film premiered at Sundance 2023. 

Winning the Golden Bear (Best Film) at Berlin International Film Festival 2023, On the Adamant follows patients and caregivers at a psychiatric centre located on a floating structure in the middle of the Seine in central Paris.

Subject investigates the ethics and responsibility inherent in documentary filmmaking, checking in with the subjects of acclaimed documentaries from the past decade – The Staircase, Hoop Dreams and The Wolfpack (NZIFF 2015) among them – to reveal the true impact of putting one’s life under the microscope for the world to see.

From independent filmmaker Nina Menkes comes Brainwashed: Sex-Camera-Power, a feminist dissection of gender dynamics on screen and the way cinematic objectification leads to real-life discrimination and violence.

By attending film festivals around the world, the NZIFF 2023 programming team brings Aotearoa audiences the very best of global cinema.

NZIFF 2023 will open in Auckland on Wednesday 19 July, followed by Wellington on Thursday 27 July, and Dunedin and Christchurch on 3 and 10 August respectively. The remaining centres will follow with the festival closing on Sunday 10 September.

The full programme will be announced in late June.