Autumn Events: The Ground We Won

The Ground We Won looks at a season in the life of a team from the Reporoa Rugby Club through the camera of husband-and-wife team Chris Pryor and Miriam Smith. File photo / NZME

A film about rugby in heartland New Zealand and a headline-making documentary about sugar are to feature in the Autumn Events mini-film festival in Auckland next month.

The curators of the mid-winter New Zealand International Film Festival run the earlier boutique event at Auckland's Civic - and other major centre cinemas - each year programming a weekend schedule of new films and classics.

This year's new films are The Ground We Won, which looks at a season in the life of a team from the Reporoa Rugby Club through the camera of husband-and-wife team Chris Pryor and Miriam Smith.

Their last film, How Far is Heaven, had them spending months filming the day-to-day lives of the Sisters of Compassion in Jerusalem on the Whanganui River.

Having spent time with the nuns, the pair went in search of another kind of religious devotion - to the national game and how it is practised and worshipped in Reporoa by the men who play for the local club.

"It is our intention that The Ground We Won speaks to both rugby enthusiasts and those who aren't," say the directors, "as we feel the film offers a rich and fascinating window into a world previously untapped by cinema".

The film is described by the festival organisers as "a fresh and remarkably candid portrait of 21st-century rural Kiwi manhood".

The other documentary is That Sugar Film, which has created headlines in its native Australia for how it follows the model of Morgan Supersize Me Spurlock to investigate the impact of sugar on health.

Actor-director Damon Gameau turned the camera on himself as he undertook a 40-teaspoon-a-day diet, which he racked up eating only food billed as healthy.

The classic films in the programme will be announced next week.

* For info on Autumn Events click here.