NZ goes post-apocalyptic at Sundance

Jemaine Clement and co-stars in the movie People, Places, Things.

Two movies made in New Zealand and another starring Jemaine Clement have been selected for next month's Sundance Film Festival, while a sci-fi splatter NZ-Canadian co-production is also to feature at the event.

Clement stars in his first romantic lead since Taika Waititi's Eagle Vs Shark in People, Places, Things.

He's plays a newly single dad of twin girls who, while balancing teaching at a college and a career as a graphic novelist, is trying to cope with the departure of his daughters' mother and finding new love.

The film is the third feature to be directed by James C. Strouse, whose Grace is Gone - another single father story - won the the audience award for drama at the 2007 Sundance festival.

Clement's film is among 16 films in competition in the US Dramatic Section of the influential festival which takes place in Park City Utah.

Among the films it's up against is Z for Zachariah, the post-apocalyptic tale starring Chiwetel Ejiofor, Margot Robbie and Chris Pine. It was shot in and around Banks Peninsula and mid Canterbury earlier this year - and which made headlines when Star Trek star Pine plead guilty to drink driving after the film's wrap party in Methven.

Director Craig Zobel's American-backed film is based on the novel by Robert C. O'Brien about a woman who believes she is the last human on Earth who meets a dying scientist and another survivor.

Also shot in the South Island - in the country around Twizel - and heading to Sundance is Slow West.

It stars Michael Fassbender in the 19th century American frontier story about a teenager (played by Australian Kodi Smit-McPhee from The Road and Dawn of the Planet of the Apes) on a journey to find the woman he loves accompanied by Fassbender's mysterious Silas.

Listed as a New Zealand production on the Sundance programme where it is in the World Cinema Dramatic Competition, it's the debut feature by Scotsman John Maclean, who, in a former life, was a member of the critically acclaimed group, The Beta Band before he turned to film-making and delivered a Bafta Award-winning short, Pitch Black Heist.

The film was co-funded by a mix of British backers and the New Zealand Film Commission and will be the third feature for Kiwi television veteran Rachel Gardner. She is was one of two producers on the film with Brit Iain Canning who won a Best Picture Oscar for The King's Speech.

Turbo Kid, a New Zealand-Canadian co-production has also been picked for the programme.

The Montreal-shot film described "as the world's first post-apocalyptic coming-of-age splatter actioner with a dash of romance" has two New Zealanders - Ant Timpson and Tim Riley - among the film's five producers.

Kiwi actors Edwin Wright and Aaron Jeffrey feature in its cast.

The film will be part of the festival's non-competive "Park City at Midnight" programme of eight genre films.

Festival programmers saw an unfinished cut - the film is currently in post-production in Auckland - and "loved it without the polish" it says Timpson, best known as the man behind the New Zealand Film Festival's "Incredibly Strange" section and the annual 48 hour film contest.

The film has three Canadian directors, brother and sister Anouk and Yoann-Karl Whissell and Francois Simard.

The trio say the inspiration for their film includes Peter Jackson's low-budget debut Braindead as well as films like Mad Max, Cherry 2000 and BMX Bandits.

Timpson says the Sundance screening will help sell the film into the North American market and that sales to the rest of the world are already sewn up.

The poster for Turbo Kid