In the wake of the Christchurch earthquake, sassy Samoan mother Mareta mentors her fledgling youth choir to the finale of The Big Sing competition.

A young speech therapist disconnected from her Tongan heritage lies about her Tongan language skills to get a job. Out of her depth, she must find a way to communicate or risk her patient’s life.

Two loners from different worlds find fleeting intimacy in this enchanting and stylish short film. A solitary teenage girl discovers an injured man on her neighbour's property, but this hirsute being seems to have fallen from another time or even another planet. Earthlings is a surreal, whimsical and surprisingly sweet portrait of two outsiders longing for connection.

When a recent widow moves to New Zealand from India, she's forced to confront her grief by completing an ordinary ritual in an extraordinary circumstance: quarantine.

In the midst of a new scheme to publicly report surgeons’ performance, a gifted surgeon’s life is thrown into disarray as her colleagues begin to close ranks, and even her partner who is a nurse at the hospital turns her back on her.

A lay preacher arrives at a British settlement in 1830s New Zealand. His violent past is soon drawn into question, and his faith put to the test, as he finds himself caught in the middle of a bloody war between Maori tribes.

Fifty-six-year-old Perianayaki contends with the difficulties of fitting into her new home, especially at the local supermarket where she works. Eye-opening and brimming with compassion, the latest film from director Bala Murali Shingade is a slice-of-life character study that provokes questions about multiculturalism and our assumptions about the people we encounter in daily life.

When estranged son, Tai, is called home to Aotearoa to his father Putty's deathbed, he is forced to confront a painful past after years of avoiding it. Once inseparable, Tai and Putty would spend hours together fishing and joking around. However, after a family secret is revealed, their relationship falls apart.

A tragic portrait of mother and child exploring grief through music and lyrical imagery.

In a Maori settlement, Ngati Toa leader Te Rauparaha composes the famous chant "Ka Mate", also known as the haka, after evading enemy capture by hiding in a kumara pit.

Meet Henry Glint. He’s a pretty normal guy with a pretty normal job, and has big plans for a perfectly normal future. But Henry is about to discover there is a parallel world just beyond his reach that is a long way from normal. It all begins when Henry makes a chance purchase of a chocolate bar in the office vending machine and opens up the portal to ‘Timeslow’, a world where time slows down.

Two tadpole-like creatures with enormous eyes chase each other around, to a driving techno soundtrack. Then these digitally-animated characters find themselves plunged into a different reality - one where a single wrong move could mean they exist in only two dimensions. After completing this mind-warping mini-rollercoaster ride, creator James Cunningham and producing partner Paul Swadel worked together on bank robbery tale Infection, which won invitation to the Cannes Film Festival.

One morning, as kids are stealing apples from an old man’s orchard high above a seaside town, an earthquake hits. No one is hurt, and the townsfolk are non-plussed, but the old man is agitated: he alone is aware of the imminent tsunami and tries to warn the village. Based on a classic Japanese fable, The Orchard was made by one-man band Bob Stenhouse, who had been nominated for an Academy Award the previous decade for pioneer tale The Frog, The Dog and The Devil. Fans of the animator will recognise his lush, luminous hand-drawn style.

A digitally engineered life form struggles with a belligerant operating system. In a skewed look at human/computer relations a belligerent digital light blinds our hero into desperate measures. The only way to stop the incomprehensible blinding pain is to opt for physical disablement. Meticulously hand-made on Silicon Graphics computers and Alias-Wavefront software.

The Film Festival has a bug. The bug is called Decaff. He is short and has an even shorter fuse. He lives in a cinema world and has adventures in all genres. Decaff is the bad-tempered little knot we all have inside us - he does what you wish you could but never would!

Henry Waghorn and his father Henry Waghorn Senior run a circus of performing chickens, however the chickens’ real value may be more to do with taste than performance. An offer from Theo Theodolite to join him in a fried chicken outlet has little attraction for the Waghorn family. However Thoe’s daughter Wilga sees a different side to Henry and his training skills and their relationship might have flourished if Henry Senior hadn’t had an unfortunate accident. Finally the truth of the accident is discovered and the explosive finale sheds new light on the need for better-trained chickens.

Len Lye (1901-1980) was a pioneer of experimental animation, and also of kinetic sculpture. This short film dramatically presents 18 minutes inside the head of the artist as a teenager. The opening scenes are set in New Zealand in the year 1917, on the day when Lye (setting out on his bicycle to deliver newspapers) makes his excited discovery that motion can be the basis for a radically new approach to art.

A social commentary watching the lives of five 15 & 16 year olds as each “slice of their life” is revealed on the hour from 12 midnight until 5am.

Darcy, a composer, sees colors when she plays musical notes. When she notices her usually subtle colors changing, she realizes a profound change is upon her. Over a summer month, Darcy creates a time of music and reflection that help her make a final choice.

A hazy night in Wellington is lit up with the pulsating colors and sounds of party people exploring their youth and freedom.