It’s a question to ponder, perhaps, as you finish your ice-cream, wait for the lights to go down and the curtain to come up: in the 50-year-plus history of the New Zealand International Film Festival and its forerunners, which directors – foreign and domestic – have had the most films?
It springs to mind when looking through the programme for this year’s festival, which spreads across the country in July. It’s full of works by arthouse perennials such as Wim Wenders (who has two this year: Japan-set drama Perfect Days and artist documentary Anselm 3D), the king of Finnish deadpan Aki Kaurismäki (Fallen Leaves, this year’s closing-night film) and American stylist Todd Haynes (May December, starring Julianne Moore as the survivor of a tabloid scandal, and Natalie Portman as the actor about to play her in a movie).
Wenders’ films have been playing at New Zealand festivals since at least 1988 with Wings of Desire. That’s according to The Gosden Years, the festival memoir of the event’s late director Bill Gosden.
It’s possible Wenders’ 1970s works turned up earlier than that. Haynes goes back to his 1989 debut Karen Carpenter documentary Superstar, while only a dive into the festival’s programme archive would say which Kaurismäki film first brought his Scandinavian drollery here. Best guess? Leningrad Cowboys Go America from 1989.
Locally, this year’s screening of a digital restoration of Bread and Roses possibly answers the question about the most appearances by a New Zealand director.
The 1993 biopic of Sonja Davies is by Gaylene Preston, who surely must be in contention as the Kiwi film-maker with the most features in the festival since arriving with 1985′s Mr Wrong.
Gosden notes in his book that there were technical problems when Bread and Roses screened in 1993 – “a late adventure in 16mm projection all involved might prefer to regret” – so this year’s digital screenings should belatedly restore some lustre to the best political biopic this country has ever produced.
Preston’s main competition for director with most NZ festival feature appearances would probably be Jane Campion. There’s no Campion film this year, though there is one by her daughter, Alice Englert. The 29-year-old seasoned actor makes her directing debut with dark comedy Bad Behaviour. She also stars in it as the stuntwoman offspring of a former child star (Jennifer Connelly) attending a retreat overseen by a spiritual guide (Ben Whishaw). It was shot here and Englert will be among the festival’s guests at screenings, having already followed the film to Sundance and Sydney.
It’s possibly the biggest local feature debut in this year’s programme and among its supporting cast is Tom Sainsbury. The writer-director-comedian also stars in his own feature, Loop Track, his latest attempt to appear on every screen possible. He plays a guy who goes on a solo tramp to calm his nerves and winds up very paranoid.
Other local notables include Rebecca Tansley’s The Strangest of Angels, her take on the NZ Opera production about Janet Frame’s time in a mental institution; Annie Goldson’s look back at a pioneering Wellington theatre troupe, Red Mole: A Romance; and co-directors Cushla Dillon and Andrew Moore’s King Loser, about the 1990s band of the same name forever destined for cultdom.
There’s much wild music elsewhere, too. Little Richard: I Am Everything looks at the rock’n roll pioneer’s influence from an African-American and queer perspective. Ennio is an epic documentary about composer Ennio Morricone who added the special sauce to many spaghetti westerns before writing some 500 film scores, made by countryman Giuseppe Tornatore. And in Squaring the Circle (The Story of Hipgnosis), rock photographer turned director Anton Corbijn looks at the London design outfit that gave us the iconic album covers of Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin and more.
The biggest actual musical in the programme is Carmen, which contains traces of Bizet’s opera of the same name but is a tale of star-crossed lovers on either side of the US-Mexico border, played by Paul Mescal (Aftersun, Normal People) and Melissia Barrera (In the Heights).
As it has in recent years, the NZIFF has grabbed major contenders from May’s cannes
Film Festival. They include Palme d’Or winner Anatomy of a Fall, the courtroom drama by French director Justine Triet that will be the opening-night film all around the country.
Wenders’ film Perfect Days won actor Koji Yakusho the best actor prize at Cannes for his largely silent performance, while Japanese director Hirokazu Kore-eda (Shoplifters, Broker) won best screenplay for Monster, his film about a mother finding disturbing changes in her son’s behaviour.
Another dozen movies with Cannes-selection credentials are also in the mix, including 2022 jury prize winner EO, Polish director Jerzy Skolimowski’s ethereal tale centred on a donkey. It’s possibly the most donkeyish of last year’s new wave of donkey films that included The Banshees of Inisherin and Triangle of Sadness.
Another film that was in competition at Cannes is also the most Hollywood star-studded offering at the NZIFF: Asteroid City by Wes Anderson features Scarlett Johansson, Margot Robbie, Tom Hanks, Tilda Swinton, Bryan Cranston, Edward Norton, Adrien Brody, Liev Schreiber, Steve Carrell, Jeff Goldblum, Willem Dafoe and more in its tale of a desert town hosting a space cadet convention in 1955.
It won’t be the deepest film of the festival, but judging by Anderson’s past confections, it promises to be the most determinedly rectangular.
The NZIFF 2023 opening dates: Auckland, July 19; Wellington, July 27; Dunedin, August 3; Hamilton, August 9; Christchurch, Tauranga, Napier & Matakana, August 10; Masterston, August 16; Whangarei, Havelock North, New Plymouth & Palmerston North, August 17; Nelson, August 23; Gisborne & Gore, August 24; Timaru, August 28.
