Film-spotters can start making notes, because the first films to feature at this year's New Zealand International Film Festival have been announced, along with the confirmed dates for each region.
So far, the list includes three local documentaries that will have their world premieres at the festival, along with two American films.
Indie director Shane Carruth, who turned heads in 2004 with his debut no-budget time-travel riddle Primer (like Looper without the guns), returns with an altogether different proposition called Upstream Color. The narrative defies description, but apparently it's a beautiful, cinematic ride about the collision of two lost souls.
United States investigative journalism is the subject of Rick Rowley's documentary Dirty Wars, which hopes to open the lid on some of the secret wars of various US Special Operations Units.
The three local documentaries all have a natural world aspect to them. Director Anthony Powell spent nine winters in Antarctica, capturing a world most of us will never see for Antarctica: A Year on Ice. Soul in the Sea is directed by Amy Taylor, who spent six months following a lone dolphin named Moko in Whakatane. And Gardening With Soul, directed by Jess Feast, creates a portrait of Sister Loyola, now in her 90s, who tends to the community garden in Island Bay, Wellington, and was named NZ Gardener of the Year in 2008.
