Ainsley Gardiner
The story of Mata, raised by a cruel guardian who keeps her from her family, Makareta, the reluctant princess of her tribe, and Missy, overlooked but in the end the glue that holds them together. Three cousins, once thrown together and as women grown apart, ultimately sharing a connection that can never be broken.
Two women run a business breaking up couples for cash but when one develops a conscience their friendship unravels.
This is a story about fear and fate, explored through the experience of both the victim and the perpetrator. A young woman home alone receives a call from a stranger, a young man asking her to the pictures. She declines but later finds the man with a knife standing in her dining room. He wants to have sex with her and seems confused about whether his intentions are brutal or romantic. Seeing his confusion and fear she talks him into letting her go outside to bring the washing. He holds his knife at her back – she realises she has no chance of escape. As they are walking back across the lawn to the house she is stung by a bee. She collapses. Weeping she tells him she is allergic to bees and convinces him to go inside to get vinegar from the kitchen to stop the swelling. As soon as he is out of sight she is up and running in one fluid movement. The intruder is left standing desolate on the lawn with the vinegar bottle – his fantasy unravelled. We find him at the pictures alone.
The Pa Boys is an energetic, uplifting road movie capturing the best of New Zealand's culture, beauty, talent and music, whilst exploring themes of identity, friendship and discovering your roots.
Young Vinnie and Jonah are bored on the mean streets — tagging, BMX-ing — when Jonah peer pressures Vinnie to join him in breaking and entering a house. When they find more than Christmas pressies inside, it tests mateship, moral codes and festive spirit.
It's 1984, and Michael Jackson is king - even in Waihau Bay, New Zealand. Here we meet Boy, an 11-year-old who lives on a farm with his gran, a goat, and his younger brother, Rocky (who thinks he has magic powers). Shortly after Gran leaves for a week, Boy's father, Alamein, appears out of the blue. Having imagined a heroic version of his father during his absence, Boy comes face to face with the real version-an incompetent hoodlum who has returned to find a bag of money he buried years before. This is where the goat enters.
The New Zealand made "Eagle vs Shark" is the tale of two socially awkward misfits and the strange ways they try to find love; through revenge on high-school bullies, burgers, and video games. Love blossoms for Lily over double Meaty Boy burgers at mid-day when uber-computer nerd Jarrod comes in and leaves with free extra large fries. After gatecrashing Jarrod's party and proving her skills on the game console, Lily goes down to Jarrod's home town with him so he can settle an old score with a past school bully.
Sometimes first love is found in the most unlikely of places, like in the carpark outside the Te Kaha pub.
