Gisborne audiences in for a treat with the return of NZIFF

Right, Greta Lee (“Nora”) and Teo Yoo (“Hae Sung”) star in director Celine Song’s USA film, Past Lives. Nora and Hae Sung, two deeply connected childhood friends, are wrested apart after Nora’s family emigrates from South Korea. Twenty years later, they are reunited for one fateful week as they confront notions of love and destiny. Picture via AP

Gisborne film lovers are in for a treat this month when the New Zealand International Film Festival (NZIFF) makes a welcome return to our beloved Odeon Theatre.

Gisborne audiences will get a reduced programme, but one that is jam-packed with festival favourites.

The NZIFF opens here next Thursday with this year’s Palme d’Or winner Anatomy of A Fall.

Director Justine Triet’s sober courtroom procedural is a departure from the films honoured by Cannes’ prestigious top award in the past two years — Triangle of Sadness 2022 and Titane 2021. Part true-crime legal thriller and part family drama, Triet’s film is a thrilling story about perception, truth and ambition.

Some other highlights include Past Lives — shimmering with melancholic longing, this is a love story of oneself as much as one of human connection.

Directed by Celine Song, Past Lives is a gorgeous, intensely bittersweet romance ruminating on the lives and loves of two childhood friends, who are fleetingly reunited after decades apart.

Another festival favourite is The New Boy, directed by Warwick Thorton.

A mesmerising story of spirituality and survival, it finds a young Aboriginal boy left in the middle of the night at a remote outback monastery run by Kate Blanchett’s rule-breaking nun, sister Eileen.

The viewer is swept into a battle of wills and faiths between the Aboriginal boy’s spiritual connection to the land, and Sister Eileen’s Catholic faith.

New Zealand offerings include New Zealand’s Best 2023. A total of 81 films were submitted for this year’s New Zealand Best short film competition.

NZIFF head of programming, Michael McDonnell, and senior programmer, Sandra Reid, viewed them all to draw up a shortlist of 12, from which guest selector Niki Caro (Whale Rider) selected the six finalists.

NZ documentary Ms. Information, which is about microbiologist Siouxsie Wiles, screens on Saturday September 2. For much of the confined population, regular media appearances by the scientist were a calming and enlightening presence amid the fear and confusion of the Covid-19 pandemic.

While she was cooly urging the populace not to panic, Siouxsie herself was the target of hate and hysteria from certain groups who took issue with her work protecting the population’s health.

“What is the world’s problem with women like me?” the microbiologist wonders in this candid fly-on-the-wall documentary covering the pressure-filled, two-year period from the first appearance of the virus.

An influx of interviews establishes the unmistakable Siouxsie as a go-to expert, earning her the grateful admiration of a worried public along with the misogynistic, online abuse from an unfortunate few.

The Festival closes with Fallen Leaves, a delightful film from Cannes. Finnish director Aki Kaurismaki returns with a deadpan romantic crowd-pleaser about two lost souls on a bumpy road to finding each other.

With four films screening each day from Thursday, August 24 to Sunday, September 3, there is plenty to choose from and something for everyone.

■  Programmes are available from the Odeon Theatre so now is the time to start planning your viewing schedule.