Film festival menu includes taste of NZ

KILLER CINEMA: Shu Qi plays the killer in The Assassin, the centrepiece film in the New Zealand International Film Festival in Masterton. PHOTO/SUPPLIED

A celluloid banquet of 39 feature films and two collections of short films will screen in Masterton as part of the 2015 New Zealand International Film Festival.

Festival publicist Megan Duffy said the two-week festival programme included award-winning international features and documentaries alongside new work from some of New Zealand's latest crop of premier filmmakers.

The full festival programme was available online at Regent 3 Cinemas and "all the most popular films that screened at NZIFF in Auckland and Wellington are included".

Comedy-drama Mia madre will open the festival in Masterton on Wednesday, September 2, with the ticket price including light food and drinks before the 8pm screening.

The centrepiece festival film in Masterton is The Assassin, a "beautiful foray into historical martial-arts territory", Ms Duffy said.

The Assassin won its Taiwanese creator, Hou Hsiao-hsien, the best director award at the 2015 Cannes Film Festival and has been described as having "the most extravagant, intricately detailed, extraordinarily beautiful recreation of the interiors, decor, dress and manners of imperial China that has ever likely been put on film".

The international documentary highlights include the acclaimed Asif Kapadia's Amy, which tells Amy Winehouse's story "sensitively in all its highs and lows"; Jennifer Peedom's Sherpa, which captures Everest's 2014 climbing season from Sherpa Phurba Tashi's point of view, including a killer avalanche; and The Wolfpack, which delves into the bizarrely sheltered lives of six brothers confined since birth to the tiny rooms of a Manhattan apartment.

Ms Duffy said Kiwi film-makers' offerings included The Price of Peace documentary about the Crown settlement with Tuhoe; Crossing Rachmaninoff, a portrait of Italian-born Auckland concert pianist Flavio Villani; and Belief: The Possession of Janet Moses, about the death in 2007 of a young Wainuiomata woman during the lifting of a makutu, or exorcism.

The Lobster is a surreal English-language fable set in a world where singles are forced to couple up or be turned into animals. A Cannes 2015 Jury Prize winner, it will close the festival on Wednesday, September 16.

Ms Duffy said festival programmes will be available from the cinema venue, and from libraries and cafes throughout Wairarapa.

- Full programme information is also available at nziff.co.nz. Tickets and programme from the cinema venue or via www.regent3.co.nz