Archived: Last Chance to See NZIFF 2017 Films

The New Zealand International Film Festival is winding down, but there are still so many great films to see.

We've rounded up a selection of great films that you still have a chance to catch before this celebration of cinema wraps up for the year. From documentaries to award-winning international features, the festival still has some gems for you.

Good Time
2 and 5 August at The Civic

In this adrenalised Cannes sensation from guerrilla-filmmaker siblings Josh and Benny Safdie, Robert Pattinson is riveting as a small-time criminal on a frantic nocturnal odyssey to break his brother out of custody.

Trophy
3 August at Event Cinemas

This thorny doco about commercialised wildlife conservation in Africa juxtaposes the potent emotional appeal of animal rights activism and the ‘if it pays, it stays’ rationalism of big game hunters.

Swagger of Thieves
3 Augut at The Civic

Taking its cue from its subjects, Julian Boshier’s all-access portrait of Head Like a Hole’s Nigel ‘Booga’ Beazley and Nigel Regan at home, on the road and in full roar on stage tells it like no other NZ music doco ever dared.

What Lies That Way
3 and 4 August at Academy Cinema

Filmmaker Paul Wolffram immerses himself in the spiritual world of the Lak people in the rainforests of southern New Ireland, Papua New Guinea in this heady combination of ethnography and lyrical expressionism.

Lady Macbeth
4 August at The Civic

Florence Pugh is mesmerising as she transmutes from nervous bride to femme fatale in this bracing British period drama based on a 19th century Russian classic.

Loveless
4 and 6 August at The Civic

Andrey Zvyagintsev (Leviathan) won the Cannes Jury Prize for his stark and gripping tale of a divorcing couple caught in a missing-child procedural. It is a stark, mysterious and terrifying story of spiritual catastrophe: a drama with the ostensible form of a procedural crime thriller.

Human Traces
5 August at ASB Waterfront Theatre

Shot on location against the rugged backdrop of the Canterbury and Otago coasts, this atmospheric Kiwi thriller marks a confident calling card for its up-and-coming writer-director Nic Gorman. A knotty psychological thriller set on an isolated subantarctic island, Human Traces deftly pairs taut suspense with slippery character study, refusing to let any of its players fall into simplistic archetypes.

My Life as a Courgette
​6 August at Event Cinemas Queen Street

This soulful and subversive Oscar-nominated feature uses stop-motion animation to tell the story of an orphan named Courgette.From the key animator on Fantastic Mr Fox, and adapted for the screen by Girlhood’s Céline Sciamma.