New Zealand International Film Festival announces first four films

The New Zealand International Film Festival has revealed its first titles for this year's lineup, with two of the four films featuring internationally recognised Kiwi cinematic talent.

The festival will host the New Zealand premiere of Yellow is Forbidden, a documentary by Kiwi director Pietra Brettkelly that follows Chinese fashion designer Guo Pei's dream to enter the world of haute couture as she prepares for her Paris debut.

Yellow is Forbidden premiered at New York's Tribeca Film Festival, where it received glowing reviews from critics, one praising it as "compelling and stimulating".

Leave No Trace, a new drama from the director of Jennifer Lawrence's breakout film Winter's Bone, will also have its New Zealand premiere.

The film stars Kiwi actress Thomasin Harcourt McKenzie as a 13-year-old living off the grid with her war veteran father (Ben Foster).

Leave No Trace has received rave reviews at international festivals, with Variety's Peter Debruge praising it for "the discovery of yet another young talent in Thomasin Harcourt McKenzie".

Matangi / Maya / M.I.A, the long-awaited documentary on Sri Lankan musician M.I.A, also joins the NZIFF programme.

Following the performer from her refugee beginnings to pop stardom, the film has been praised as "a hypnotic portrait of a restless and inconvenient artist".

Lastly, Bombshell: HedyLamarr joins the lineup. The debut documentary from director Alexandra Dean is a portrait of one of Hollywood's top actresses in the 1940s who lived a double life as a groundbreaking inventor.

More information on each film can be found at the NZIFF website.