WEB EXCLUSIVE | REVIEW | NZIFF Written by Trevor Pronoso | Letterboxd: @CleverGurl | Instagram: @trev.pro | Contributing Writer Footrot Flats: The Dog's Tail Tale (1986) dir. Murray Ball Aotearoa New Zealand / Australia, 68 mins Aggressively kiwi. I began to realise, at least since last year's NZIFF, that 4K restorations of old movies are much rarer and more special than catching the latest coming-of-age film (the latter are also more likely to hit streaming services than r

WEB EXCLUSIVE | REVIEW | NZIFF Written by Trevor Pronoso | Letterboxd: @CleverGurl | Instagram: @trev.pro | Contributing Writer Phantom Beirut (1998) dir. Ghassan Salhab France / Lebanon, 117 mins Possibly my favourite film I've seen in the festival thus far. I can't help but identify with every single sentiment Beirut Phantom represents: the exasperated love and conjugal dissatisfaction with the place you were born in and grew up. My parents asked me on my birthday a few w

WEB EXCLUSIVE | REVIEW | NZIFF This is part of a series of roundtable discussions and extended dialogues conducted by Ricky Lai (@rickthelai), Trevor Pronoso (@CleverGurl), Madeline Smith (@prime4illusion), and Caeden Tipler (@ctipler) on films that have premiered at NZIFF 2026. Dao (2026) dir. Alain Gomis France / Guinea-Bissau / Senegal, 185 mins The following exchange is between Ricky and Trevor on Alan Gomis' latest film, Dao. Trevor: If you told me this was a three-hour

WEB EXCLUSIVE | REVIEW | NZIFF Written by Trevor Pronoso | Letterboxd: @CleverGurl | Instagram: @trev.pro | Contributing Writer Leibniz – Chronicle of a Lost Painting (2026) dir. Edgar Reitz, Anatol Schuster Germany, 104 mins With the motion picture camera came the promise of ambient facticity no longer as something to be struggled for but as an automatic by-product of the medium itself. It appeared as though stories could be immediately embedded in the reality in which the

WEB EXCLUSIVE | REVIEW | NZIFF Written by Trevor Pronoso | Letterboxd: @CleverGurl | Instagram: @trev.pro | Contributing Writer For the dedicated cinephiles reading this, most discourse surrounding Dry Leaf hits the nail on the head as to why this should be on your immediate radar: an imaginative synthesis between impressionist/post-impressionist painting alongside the patient cinematic sensibilities of Abbas Kiarostami. The real kicker is filmmaker Alexandre Koberidze's ing

WEB EXCLUSIVE | REVIEW | NZIFF Written by Trevor Pronoso | Letterboxd: @CleverGurl | Instagram: @trev.pro | Contributing Writer The Wizard of the Kremlin dir. Olivier Assayas France/UK/USA, 145 mins Olivier Assayas is a known admirer of Guy Debord, which—despite my not having seen many Assayas films—allows me to make the fair assertion that The Wizard of the Kremlin is a work of détournement (he'd probably let film writers like me make such comparisons before he does), albei

WEB EXCLUSIVE | REVIEW | NZIFF Written by Trevor Pronoso | Letterboxd: @CleverGurl | Instagram: @trev.pro | Contributing Writer The Ice Tower dir. Lucile Hadžihalilović France, 145 mins There's this quote by Terence Davies that immediately popped into my mind halfway through watching The Ice Tower, where he talks about his first time seeing Singin' in the Rain (1952) at the age of seven: "During that scene in the rain, I cried and cried and cried… [My sister] asked, 'Why are

REVIEW | WEB EXCLUSIVE Written by Tashi Donnelly (she/her) | @tashi_rd | Editor Ahead of opening night, I caught up with director Grace Augustine to talk about reimagining Henrik Ibsen’s An Enemy of the People for present-day Aotearoa. You can read that interview here. She told me the production was motivated in part by increasing nitrate contamination in our freshwater, and by a desire to create political theatre that asks audiences to think critically about the systems gove

REVIEW | ISSUE NINE | WHAKAKATA / HUMOUR Written by Trevor Pronoso | Letterboxd: @CleverGurl | Instagram: @trev.pro | Contributing Writer With Hasan in Gaza (2025) dir. Kamal Aljafari France / Germany / Palestine / Qatar / Switzerland, 106 mins Within the first 30 minutes of this film, I could already tell the differing cinematic temperaments of director Kamal Aljafari and his tour guide, Hasan Elboubou. Throughout With Hasan in Gaza, Kamal would often instruct Hasan to take

REVIEW | ISSUE NINE | WHAKAKATA / HUMOUR Written by Ricky Lai (he/him) | @rickthelai on IG & Letterboxd | Columnist The first UniFest short film competition resembles the kind of combination between creative outlet and filmmaking practice which I would have adored during my studies. It’s reassuring to see a body of undergrads wishing for the same, taking that into their own hands – run by the students, for the students. Each entry was held down by only two creative constraint

KŌRERO TOI | ISSUE NINE | WHAKAKATA / HUMOUR Written by Isabella den Boogert (they/them) | @belladbb | Contributing Artist Isabella den Boogert is a multidisciplinary artist who works between the mediums of sculpture and printmaking. They explore the internet-driven culture of performance, self-presentation, and identity in the digital age, using text and found objects as tools for exploring culture. Often delving into the rabbit holes and dark trends of the internet and pop

REVIEW | ISSUE NINE | WHAKAKATA / HUMOUR Written by Liam Hansen (they/them) | @liamhanse.n | Associate Editor It’s taken Paolo Bertolin, the New Zealand International Film Festival’s artistic director, a couple of years to find his footing away from the prestige of his homeland of Italy to the bonkers reality of New Zealand’s film industry. While the government struggles to comprehend the value of anything less than the millions generated by Peter Jackson and Taika Waititi as

REVIEW | ISSUE NINE | WHAKAKATA / HUMOUR Written by Trevor Pronoso | Letterboxd: @CleverGurl | Instagram: @trev.pro | Contributing Writer Out of the Blue (2006) dir. Robert Sarkies Aotearoa New Zealand, 103 mins During the post-screening Q&A, actor Matthew Sunderland shares something remarkably revealing when asked about the process of getting into the character of David Grey: that it was relatively easy to understand the psyche of David because most of what he needed to kno

INTERVIEW | ISSUE EIGHT | SCREENS Written by James A. Glass (he/him) | @magicalflamebow | Contributing Writer In today’s video game climate with big studios pressing down on consumers, it’s important that we champion independent creators and studios. I talked with Dave Oshry, CEO and co-founder of New Blood Interactive (NB) where he discussed how the studio operates, what he considers indie, and the current game dev landscape in Aotearoa. James: How does New Blood support dev