NEWS | ISSUE ELEVEN | MAHIMAHI / SEX Written by Liam Hansen (they/them) | @liamhanse.n “Nobody is entitled to their own seat,” says Ricardo Menéndez March with the confidence that he can steal Mount Albert from White and turn it green just as the party has pulled off before. Unlike White and Lee, both of whom are stuck in the risky thirties of their party lists, Menéndez March is steadfast in the top ten of the Green Party, allowing him to continue navigating their work again

NEWS | ISSUE ELEVEN | MAHIMAHI / SEX Written by Liam Hansen (they/them) | @liamhanse.n The Opportunity Party is a strange little beast. It runs on the lines of radical centrism, having been founded as the Opportunities Party in 2016 by Gareth Morgan and since running in an attempt to distance themselves from how much he hates cats. There were rumblings of a TOP victory last election, with party leader Raf Manji staking everything on winning Ilam in Christchurch before losing

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. Minotaur (2026) dir. Andzrej Zvyagintsev France/Latvia/Germany, 135 mins The following exchange is between Ricky and Madeline on Andzrej Zvyagintsev's latest film, Minotaur. Ricky: Early on in Minota

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. The History of Concrete (2026) dir. John Wilson USA, 101 mins The following exchange is between Ricky and Madeline on John Wilson's latest film, The History of Concrete. Ricky: Overheard from an audi

WEB EXCLUSIVE | REVIEW | NZIFF Written by Trevor Pronoso | Letterboxd: @CleverGurl | Instagram: @trev.pro | Contributing Writer Kiri and Lou Go Raaa! (2026) dir. Harry Sinclair, Antony Elworthy Aotearoa New Zealand, 61 mins I think back to the previous animated film screening I attended, Footrot Flats: The Dog's Tail Tale, and wonder if such a dedicatedly nostalgic (older) audience for that film will be the case for Kiri and Lou 40 years from now. Though Footrot Flats is ma

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. The Ice Tower (2025) dir. Lucile Hadžihalilović France, 117 mins The following exchange is between Ricky and Trevor on Lucile Hadžihalilović's latest film, The Ice Tower. Ricky: Bear with me here. In

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 Ricky Lai | Ricky Lai (he/him) | @rickthelai on IG & Letterboxd | Columnist Remake dir. Ross McElwee United States, 114 minutes ‘You can see the lettering in the mud.’ Some folks just can’t put down the camera. Earlier in the week before seeing Ross McElwee’s meta-documentary Remake, I caught Brydie O’Connor’s Barbara Forever, a feature on American avant-garde pioneer of queer cinema, Barbara Hammer. Hammer was essentially an archiv

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