Two lost souls open festival
The Dark Horse, a New Zealand movie tipped to become one of the year’s most important local releases, is to be the opening night film at next month’s the New Zealand International Film Festival.
The second feature by writerdirector James Napier Robertson, the film stars Cliff Curtis and Boy’s James Rolleston in a story based on the life of chess champion Genesis Potini, who inspired the 2001 documentary Dark
Horse.
Curtis plays Potini, who was a mental health advocate afflicted with bipolar disorder and who died in 2011.
The dramatisation casts Rolleston as his nephew who finds himself being dragged into his father’s gang while Potini takes charge at a local kids’ chess club. Festival director Bill Gosden says
The Dark Horse as a film that “is going to mean a lot to New Zealand audiences for years to come”, with the programme describing Curtis’ performance as “superb”.
The film’s producers say the film is “about two lost souls finding the strength to carry on through each other's company — believing in themselves. Even if no one else does.”
The film will open the Auckland event on July 17 and the Wellington one a week later.
It’s one of a dozen local features in this year’s programme being announced today that also includes Gerard Johnstone’s comedy-horror
Housebound, which has already proved a hit with audiences and reviewers at the SXSW festival in Austin, Texas earlier this year.
The other local features getting their world premieres at this year’s festival are . . . Aunty and the Star People Director: Gerard Smyth In New Zealand, writer Jean Watson is an anonymous elderly woman living in a modest Wellington flat. In southern India she is revered as the famous “Jean Aunty”. Gerard Smyth’s documentary explores her fascinating double life. Cap Bocage Director: Jim Marbrook Jim Marbrook, director of Mental Notes and the original Dark Horse documentary, takes us inside the long environmental campaign that followed the pollution of traditional Kanak fishing grounds in New Caledonia in 2008. Erewhon Director Gavin Hipkins For his first feature-length film, widely exhibited New Zealand photographer Gavin Hipkins invests a richly pictorial essay with the 21st-century resonance of Samuel Butler’s lively utopian satire
Erewhon, written in 1872. Everything We Loved Director: Max Currie A man, a woman and a 4-year-old boy retreat to a house outside town. What are they hiding from? Debut writer/ director Max Currie staggers the revelations to dramatic effect in this suspenseful psychological drama. Hot Air Director: Alister Barry In the years since New Zealand politicians began to grapple with climate change our carbon emissions have burgeoned. Alister Barry’s doco draws on TV archives and interviews with key participants to find out why. Voices of the Land Nga¯ Reo o te Whenua Director: Paul Wolffram Paul Wolffram’s fascinating and eloquent doco about Ma¯ ori instrumental traditions accompanies Richard Nunns and Horomona Horo as they perform in a series of remarkable South Island wilderness settings. notes to eternity Director: Sarah Cordery Renowned critics of Israeli policies — Noam Chomsky, Norman Finkelstein, Sara Roy and Robert Fisk — provide personal substance and historical perspective to their arguments in this impressive film by New Zealander Sarah Cordery. Orphans and Kingdoms Director: Paolo Rotondo In writer/director Paolo Rotondo’s debut feature, three homeless teenagers break into a deluxe Waiheke Island home and find themselves caught in a tense psychodrama with the conflicted owner. REALITi Director: Jonathan King An up-and-coming media executive has good reason to question the very facts of his existence in this microbudget sci-fi chiller from director Jonathan King ( Black Sheep, Under the
Mountain) and novelist Chad Taylor. Te Awa Tupua: Voices from the River Director: Paora Joseph This beautiful new film from the director of Tatarakihi honours the power and poetry in the stories of Whanganui iwi, past and present, and their longstanding struggle to reclaim guardianship over their ancestral river. Tu¯ manako/Hope Director: Susy Pointon Many roads lead to the Hokianga in this engaging documentary portrait of several generations of inhabitants: local iwi, long-established farming families, and the alternative lifestylers of the 60s and 70s who put down roots and stayed.