Kiwi film 'Turbo Kid' wins big at Saturn Awards

Munro Chambers as The Kid and Laurence Leboeuf as Apple in Turbo Kid. Photo / Supplied

After getting a lot of attention at the Sundance and SXSW film festivals, Kiwi/Canadian co-production Turbo Kid has won the Saturn Award for best international film.

The awards are like the Oscars for science fiction, fantasy and horror films, and today honoured the sci-fi 80s throwback, produced by Kiwis Ant Timpson and Tim Riley.

Turbo Kid is set in a post-apocalyptic future in which a teenager turned superhero called The Kid, teams up with a girl called Apple and a cowboy called Frederic. The trio traverse the Wastelands to take down the tyrannical leader Zeus.

It was written and directed by a Canadian film collective called RKSS, and after a positive debut at Sundance, went on to win the audience award at SXSW.

*Warning: this video contains images which may offend some viewers.

In a previous interview, Timpson, who runs the Incredibly Strange section at the NZ International Film Festival, said even though the project "was a co-production in Canada's favour", he did feel a "sense of New Zealand through it".

"It's a real potpourri of accents on screen which gives you a sense of being dropped somewhere between Australia, New Zealand and Montreal," he said.

"The film's editing, sound design and visual post were all done in New Zealand with the great team at Curious Films. The idea to make the feature film came to me after I saw the director's short film. So New Zealand's been there from day one."

But he adds, "the heart and soul of the film is all down to the three wonderful writer/directors (RKSS) ...This is a testament of their blood, sweat and tears on board. I do think its a true co-production in every sense of the word."

Timpson took to Twitter to celebrate the win this afternoon, exclaiming: "Holy s*** we f*****g won best international film", and Patrick Ewald of the film's Epic Pictures, posted a celebratory shot to Instagram:

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#turbokid #rkss #wewon #feelinghappy #saturnawards @epicpicturesgroup #epicpicturesgroup

A post shared by Patrick Ewald (@patrickewaldla) on Jun 22, 2016 at 9:41pm PDT