How the International Film Festival Supports the Future of Aotearoa Cinema

NEWS | ISSUE NINE | WHAKAKATA / HUMOUR

Written by Caeden Tipler (they/them) | @caedentipler | Contributing Writer

The time is now for Aotearoa cinema. Recent films, such as Mārama and Big Girls Don’t Cry, are garnering international attention. And films like Caterpillar and The Weed Eaters have become instant cult classics for audiences at home.

It seems intuitive, then, that our largest film festival, Whānau Marama: New Zealand International Film Festival, would embrace this new cohort of artists. 

In recent years, the festival has operated on a biannual model for opening night, selecting a compelling local film, then a buzzy international one. Two years ago, the festival opened with Josephine Stewart-Tewhiu’s We Were Dangerous, while this year it opened with Paloma Schneideman’s Big Girls Don’t Cry. The latter of which was fresh off positive press at the Sundance and South by Southwest film festivals earlier this year. NZIFF Artistic Director Paolo Bertolin described the feature as “the New Zealand film of the year” in his opening remarks.

Schenideman spoke about her relationship to the festival when introducing her film. She described watching the 2012 opener, Beasts of the Southern Wild, then turning to her best friend sitting beside her to say she, too, would open the festival one day. 

Big Girls Don’t Cry is about as kiwi as it gets for a coming-of-age story. Reminiscent of Lorde’s Pure Heroine, it’s the kind of raw, weird girl art that only comes from exploring self-identity within the confines of 2000s New Zealand. 

While international openers have included filmmakers from Europe, Asia, and beyond, it can be especially meaningful to attend an opening night that also serves as a film’s premiere in its home country. Especially when the filmmaker is so excited to be at the festival.

This feeling was amplified at the premiere of Gavin Fitzgerald and Vea Mafile’o’s Lomu, which filled the coveted mid-festival ‘Big Nights’ slot. The documentary follows the career and personal life of rugby superstar and proud Tongan-New Zealander Jonah Lomu. A life that was connected to the broader emergence of New Zealand within global sports and cultural consciousness in the 1990s. 

The Aotearoa premiere embodied the mafana (pride) that Tongans have for Lomu - their son of Tonga. While it did not reach the same heights in numbers as the Tongan premiere (which had an 8,000-strong audience), the same heart was there. 

The night opened with a performance from students at Wesley College (Lomu’s alma mater) and speeches from the filmmakers. It closed with a moving expression of gratitude from Lomu’s mother Hepi. Director Vea Mafile’o focused her remarks on the communal effort to make the film, from financing to the interviews, and the responsibility she felt to her culture as a Tongan filmmaker. 

Recurring guest programmer Heperi Mita has ties to the festival that span generations. He’s long been an attendee through his whānau - his parents, Geoff Murphy and Merata Mita, were both filmmakers. He’s continuing that tradition this year, bringing his 4-year-old daughter for the first time to see Kiri and Lou go Raaa! (2026). 

Mita sees the festival as having an important role in showcasing films that, while still worthwhile, don’t have the same commercial appeal as Hollywood heavyweights. The festival was one of the few avenues to screen a politically charged film like Patu! (1983), the hugely significant documentary from Merata Mita about the campaign to stop the 1981 Springbok tour during the height of apartheid South Africa. 

As Mita put it, “Because the Film Festival had given her a platform basically when nobody else would, there's an incredible loyalty I have to the Film Festival as an institution. For having the courage to highlight those perspectives.” Mita’s own documentary about his mother, Merata: How Mum Decolonised the Screen (2018), also premiered at the festival. 

As a programmer, Mita focuses on films that meet at the “convergence of what's happening in the cinema scene creatively” and “in the world socially and politically”. He sees film as “a great place to escape, have empathy for somebody else's situation or even to recognise your own situation in somebody else's experience.”

Mita emphasises that while New Zealand doesn’t have the resources to compete with big blockbusters, particularly coming out of the United States, that doesn’t mean our stories aren’t valuable. The festival provides an opportunity to celebrate our uniqueness as a country or bring overseas festival heavyweights (e.g. Big Girls Don’t Cry) to the intended audience back home. 

Mita also sees the festival as holding the line against AI, which is putting a lot of pressure on “every level of people making any type of audiovisual content”. He emphasised that places like the festival will become even more important as people continue to look for a place to celebrate human narratives, as they always have. In his words, “There's always going to be a film culture. There'll always be a celebration of people. Just getting together and telling stories, storytelling, is the most ancient form of cultural transmission.” 

The Aotearoa film he’s most excited about at the festival is Lomu. The impact of Lomu’s legacy resonates - Mita “grew up with him being this legendary figure” - as well as the film’s focus on the story of the Pacific diaspora in New Zealand. 

Notably, the festival also showcases emerging filmmaking talent through the shorts programme, Ngā Whanaunga Aotearoa: New Zealand’s Best. The shorts this year were a vibrant line-up, a diversity of styles serving as a bridge between different parts of the Aotearoa film scene. 

Several of the films in this year's line-up emerged from the first cohort of filmmaker Jane Campion’s pop-up film intensive course, A Wave in the Ocean. The programme was backed by the New Zealand Film Commission and Netflix, and provided mentorship, funding, and support for emerging filmmakers in Aotearoa. 

Māori Pasifika short films are curated by the Waiora Māori Film Festival and Pollywood - Pasifika Film. While previously its own line-up, they have in recent years become part of a combined programme to reflect both the diversity of experiences in Aotearoa and filmmakers' wishes. 

The programme was also part of the festival’s Film Focus Weekend, “a celebration of cinema from across the motu” through screenings and special events. This included a screening of all the short films from the first A Wave in the Ocean cohort, as well as a very popular screening of The Ungrateful Tenant (2026), accompanied by The Silent Chamber Orchestra at the Hollywood Avondale. 

Tom Augustine, Festival Programme Advisor, is a strong advocate for the shorts programme and its place for New Zealand filmmakers. “We’re seeing an emergence of young people making films that offer up a new voice. The hope is that we might arrive at some kind of cinematic movement, a really aligned one. You can see that in Big Girls Don’t Cry and The Ungrateful Tenant and other films like that.”

“All of those films start at the shorts scene. In order for those filmmakers to emerge, they need to have success with the shorts they make. Particularly in New Zealand, where it is one of the few lifelines to feature filmmaking. So if you have any interest in supporting the New Zealand film scene as it moves into the future, then I think it’s a duty of anyone who supports New Zealand film to go, to vote, to support the filmmakers.”