Our short film program this year is a curation of submissions and selected works from Australian & New Zealand filmmakers. Special thanks to Screen Australia and the New Zealand Film Commission.

Tickets

FOR THOM
Drama | 2023 | New Zealand | 11 min | English | English subtitles
Starring: Za O’Meagher; Bianca Munro-Boga; Alaina Wilks
Directed by Rafa Yam

An isolated teenage girl suffering from suicidal thoughts and depression, Thom tries reconnecting with her best friend Milly in an attempt to fix her fragile mental state.

Shot on 16mm & 8mm film in Melbourne, Australia, Upsodown is a journey of self-awareness and discovery. Exploring the disconnectedness between Earth and humanity, Ceddia’s use of surreal imagery intensifies the gravitas of the current environmental crisis.

Eyebrows raise in the Bagg household when young Sam announces that he would like a Princess Kiana doll for his birthday. Granny Fanny urges father Manfred to set an example of acceptable masculinity, and as Manfred takes the family on an expedition to the Great Outdoors, a violent storm strikes.

A recent Sri Lankan immigrant, 56-year-old Perianayaki, begins another day at her job stacking shelves at the local supermarket. With her limited grasp of English, she struggles to fit in and understand or be understood by colleagues and customers alike. Today, on her wedding anniversary, Perianayaki is forced to reconcile with the bittersweet realities of her life.

Lying atop an old car, parked in the driveway, a couple muse on love, life, and the learnings we take away from our experiences – except their conversation is unscripted, and the pair on screen are a real couple. With only three takes shot from three angles, Nap Nap draws the viewer into the conversation by placing intimate emphasis on, not just the act of speaking, but the act of listening.

A gifted twelve-year-old, Jaehee, uses an unorthodox healing method to heal those who claim to be possessed. When her father exploits her gift, readily accepting money from those seeking peace from their tormented lives, Jaehee’s growing unease with the situation puts her and her domineering father on a collision course of love, duty, connection, and something much darker.

The portrait of a family centred on 95-year-old New Zealand actress, Dame Kate Harcourt and her life living with her daughter, acting coach Dame Miranda Harcourt.

A daughter mourns the loss of her father, a passionate collector of space memorabilia, as she falls under the sway of the 'flown' space objects in her inheritance. Combining fascinating archive with dramatic performance, this hybrid documentary blending fact and fiction interrogates how and why flown space memorabilia comes to be collected and stored for posterity, and why these objects exert such a strong pull on the human imagination.

A short, magic realist drama exploring antisemitism, queerness and spirituality. Daniel, a teenage boy caught in a web of lies, is pulled in different directions by his best mate and burgeoning Neo-Nazi, James, his secret lover, Isaac, and his orthodox Jewish father, Adam. As his ability to juggle his identities falters, he finds himself haunted by a Hasidic spectre demanding a sacrifice.

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