NZ docu-drama wins Polish film grand prix
06 Aug 2008
Rain of the Children, the latest feature film by award-winning New Zealand director Vincent Ward, has won the Grand Prix at one of Europe’s biggest film festivals.
Ward’s sixth feature film is a personal journey back to his home in the remote Urewera bush region of New Zealand’s North Island. It won the grand prix award on an audience vote.
Rain of the Children was one of 16 features selected for the Era New Horizons Film Festival in Wroclaw, Poland. The event is one of Europe’s biggest film festivals with 360 screenings.
Ward, who was in Poland as a guest of the festival, said he hadn’t expected the award and was delighted with the audience response.
Festival focus on New Zealand
The Wroclaw festival also presented a retrospective of Ward’s work (nine films) one of the few occasions when the complete work of a New Zealand film maker has been acknowledged internationally.
The festival also celebrated other New Zealand talent, screening 19 other New Zealand features, 45 New Zealand short films, and bringing Kiwi musicians, a choreographer, photographer, actor and nine film makers to Poland.
"There is tremendous interest in and appreciation of our films and music, creating a fantastic atmosphere at the festival," said Ward.
"Afterwards many Poles commented that they want to visit New Zealand."
New Zealand premiere
Rain of the Children has just completed New Zealand premiere screenings in the Auckland and Wellington film festivals, and is to screen in other film festivals throughout the country before beginning a theatrical release via Rialto Distribution.
The film received rave reviews after its world premiere at the Sydney Film Festival and has been acclaimed "a stunning docu-drama … masterful … compelling in its personal detail and almost mythic in its sweep," by the Hollywood Reporter.
Rain of the Children was produced by Vincent Ward and fellow New Zealanders Marg Slater and Tainui Stephens.
Written by Ward, it revisits the mystery behind the life of Puhi, a woman from the remote Urewera Tūhoe people. She was the centre of Ward’s acclaimed 1978 documentary In Spring One Plants Alone.
Urewera’s unique location
The Urewera region where Rain of the Children was filmed has New Zealand’s fourth largest national park and is the ancestral home of the Tūhoe people.
Legend traces the parentage of Tūhoe to Hine Pukohurangi (the mist maiden) and Te Maunga (the mountain) which is why Tūhoe are known as ‘children of the mist’.
The park protects the largest remaining area of native bush in New Zealand and encompasses Lake Waikaremoana, a 250 metre deep lake formed by a landslide 2200 years ago. The track around the lake is one of New Zealand’s ‘Great Walks’.
These topics may also be of interest to you
|
