New Zealand International Film Festival

Film reviewer Christine Powley gives us her picks for the 2012 International Film Festival.

A Dunedin film-maker is looking forward to the 2012 New Zealand International Film Festival, which starts next week.

A digital revolution will be behind the 2012 New Zealand International Film Festival in Dunedin this month.

In his latest film Florian Habicht has told a New York love story - his own. Although how much of it is real is up to the audience to decide. Whatever the case, the movie looks set to catapult the eccentric film-maker to new heights, writes Scott Kara.

Illustrious Energy might highlight a period in New Zealand history, but the film also has its own interesting back-story, writes Shane Gilchrist.

Annoyed by the insidious creep of marketing, Morgan Spurlock has made a film about product placement. The twist? It's funded by product placement. Shane Gilchrist reports.

The New Zealand International Film Festival starts in Dunedin this week. But Otago Daily Times film critic Mark Orton has been in Auckland where the fun has already started. He passes on some tips to the thrills, laughs and life lessons headed our way.

Thomas Balmes is a French documentary film-maker who has made a few little-seen works of cultural anthropology - the conversion of Papua New Guinea natives to Christianity, Finns seeing how their outsourced cellphones are manufactured in China.

When mainstream cinema seems capable only of giving us frothy fun, either through explosions or wardrobe, the International Film Festival is the time to savour the delights of subtext and ambiguity.

Surprisingly, given the wealth of material about the Doors, the new documentary When You're Strange is the first full-length non-fiction look at the rock band.

Briar March's ambitious new documentary, which will screen in this year's International Film Festival, should launch her as a film-maker to watch.