NZIFF 2023: Q&A With Michael McDonnell, programmer

How has it been programming the 2023 NZIFF?

It almost seems like things have been getting back to something like normal after several years of disruption. It was good to be able to attend festivals like Sundance and Berlin myself, and my colleague Sandra Reid was again back at Cannes where the programme was as rich as ever.

Anatomy of a Fall

What have the quality of the films been like this year? 

As usual there were a lot more great films than we could reasonably fit into a 19-day programme, although a disconcerting number of the biggest films still come in very late in the piece from Cannes, which can make for some anxious programmers.

The Aotearoa contingent seems particularly strong this year – what do you put that down to? 

The number of strong local films available usually just comes down to timing and what is ready to be finished or released around festival time each year. I don’t know if this year is any different except that this year’s crop has proven to be especially bountiful.

 The big local title this year is Bad Behaviour, hot off its Sundance premiere and screening in competition at the Sydney Film Festival, but we’re also excited to be presenting the premieres of a trio of Kiwi genre flicks, Loop Track, The Paragon and Home Kills as well as a great selection of local docos like Ms. Information, King Loser, Red Mole, Building Bridges and Grant Sheehan and two performance films, the opera film The Strangest of Angels and Tiki Taane’s CSO concert documentary having its NZ premiere in Christchurch.

Bad Behaviour

 Which films are already doing well around the country?

The biggest sellers so far are our opening night film Anatomy of a Fall, Asteroid City, Past Lives and our closing night film Fallen Leaves. More surprising top sellers include Merkel and the music documentary Little Richard: I Am Everything. The top selling New Zealand titles are Loop Track, Bad Behaviour, King Loser and Ms. Information. 

Which film do you think people should not miss out on and why?

I suspect a sleeper hit will be Robot Dreams. Although it may look like a fairly straightforward children’s film it’s definitely one that hits on a deeper level. Audiences that went wild for Marcel last year will probably be kicking themselves if they miss out on this one. Just remember to bring along a box of tissues, trust me you’ll be thankful. 

Robot Dreams

Another real sleeper that will stun audiences is Beyond Utopia. It tells a truly amazing story and gives a pretty different view of life in North Korea than the usual quirky documentary portrayals we see.

 Also want to mention Earth Mama which tells a very relatable and universal story about a young African-American mother struggling with a punishing welfare system that is seemingly designed to keep people down. Expect to hear more raves as it goes on wide release in the US later this month.

Which are your favourites from the programme and why?

As usual, some of the smaller, more unknown titles are my real favourites. A definite favourite is the Chinese film Suzhou River from 2000, which I believe will be screening officially in New Zealand for the first time, certainly theatrically. It’s a great film which shows a real different, incredibly grungy side of Shanghai which was on its way out at the turn of the century and is completely gone now. The film itself is a lovelorn Wong Karwai-esque drama with a touch of Vertigo.

Two newer favourites hot from Cannes include Omen and Pictures of Ghosts. Omen is the directorial debut of Belgian-Congolese rapper Baloji and is one of the more eye-poppingly stylish films in the festival this year. It’s not a horror film per se but Baloji definitely riffs on the elevated horror stylings of films like Get Out and Midsommar to tell the story of a Congolese man returning home from Europe. Pictures of Ghosts is an effortlessly entertaining documentary from festival favourite Kleber Mendonça Filho which will delight fans of his earlier films like Neighbouring Sounds and Aquarius. It’s a love letter to his hometown Recife and its arcane motion picture history. Who knew that the Nazis built a modernist movie theatre in Brazil?

What do you think have been the themes of this year’s films? 

It’s hard to identify a unifying theme in 130-ish wildly different films, but this year there have been a noticeable number of films set in educational and medical institutions.

Monster

Kore-eda’s latest Monster follows an incident at a school from three different perspectives while Blue Jean about homophobia in schools in Thatcherite Britain sadly seems incredibly current. Radical tells a true inspirational story set in Mexico, while Arnold Is a Model Student takes a satirical look at education and politics in Thailand.

The documentary De Humani Corporis Fabrica offers a one-of-a-kind documentary perspective of the goings-on in French hospital taking cameras where nobody ever thought they would go, while Midwives delivers a more conventional and crowd-pleasing look at life in a busy maternity unit. On the Adamant portrays a unique outpatient service for Parisians with mental health challenges set aboard a barge floating on the Seine.

What do you think will be an audience favourite this year and why? 

There’s also a strong line-up of political films and I suspect Merkel will be a firm audience favourite, although we’re all quite familiar with who Angela Merkel was, the film will be quite revelatory to Kiwi audiences as it compiles a treasure trove of archival material from German TV to present a rounded portrait of the long-time Chancellor.

I suspect audiences will really respond to a couple of quite different political thrillers. Reality, an adaptation of director Tina Satter’s own play, delivers an intense experience by merely recreating the arrest of US whistleblower Reality Winner word-for-word, in real-time, while How to Blow Up a Pipeline takes a similarly realist approach that will have audiences on the edge of their seats as it follows a gang of eco-activists who take climate protest to the next level.

How To Have Sex

Based on its reception in Cannes, I think audiences will really react to Molly Manning Walker’s How to Have Sex which took home the Un Certain Regard Prize and probably should’ve had a competition berth. It was quickly compared to last year’s audience favourite Aftersun and not just because of its similar Mediterranean holiday settings.

It must be very heartening to welcome back international guests to the festival too?

Molly Manning Walker has just recently been confirmed as able to attend our screenings of How to Have Sex in Auckland and Wellington, so the screenings will definitely be something special. But perhaps our biggest get is Celine Song who will be visiting Auckland to present her film Past Lives here in person. Her fellow A24 studio-mate, Elegance Bratton will be attending Auckland and Wellington to present his striking and intensely personal drama The Inspection. A very unique queer coming-of-age story based on Elegance’s own background and involvement in the US Marines.

From Australia we’re welcoming the plunderphonic duo Soda Jerk who regular festivalgoers will remember from their savage satire of Australian politics Terror Nullius. This time they’ve manipulated thousands of clips to hilariously reimagine the madness that is US politics in the Trump era in their new work Hello Dankness. Also visiting from across the ditch is Rolf de Heer with his one-of-a-kind new film The Survival of Kindness.

From further afield we’re welcoming Laha Mebow with her indigenous Taiwanese family drama GAGA and perhaps the most exciting Q&A I’m looking forward to will be with Danish director Christoffer Guldbrandsen for his film A Storm Foretold. Guldbrandsen embedded himself with Trump fixer Roger Stone through the 2020 election and literally barely survived to tell the tale.

Which is your one pick of Ant Timpson’s Incredibly Strange film festival?

#Manhole

Ant has a great selection this year and I don’t know how he did it seeing as he’s spent the better part of the lead up to the festival in the remote South Island wilderness shooting his upcoming film. I can attest to the wild entertainment value of titles like #Manhole, Hello Dankness and Sisu, but the Incredibly Strange title I’m most looking forward to checking out myself is River the latest title from the filmmakers behind cult festival favourite Beyond the Infinite Two Minutes. It looks like a similarly inventive low-budget wonder, something like Groundhog Day on steroids.

Just finally, which is the one film you will be in the crowd for, with your phone off and luxuriating in? 

Hoping I’ll be able to clear the decks and catch one of the screenings of the riotous and campy noir Detour, it’s a long-time favourite so I’m hoping seeing it in pristine 4K is as much fun as seeing it on a poor quality public domain VHS, which I think would’ve been my previous viewing experience.

For more on the films playing the NZIFF 2023, please visit www.nziff.co.nz.