Race Across New Zealand was the first of three telefilms made for the Rocket Power cartoon series, first transmitted on Nickelodeon in the US on 16 Feb 2002, during the 2002 Winter Olympics. The plotline entails the Rocket Power gang's trip to New Zealand to participate in "The Junior Waikikamukau Games", with Otto Rocket competing against the son of an athlete who once beat his father Ray at a race in New Zealand (allegedly by cheating), and his sister Reggie's attempts to get herself noticed by Ray, who is constantly cheering for Otto exclusively. Sports featured in this telefilm include zorbing, mountain biking, tubing, dirtboarding, windsurfing, and snowboarding.
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.
On June 21st, 2025, a film crew was sent to a competition in Wellington to document the niche sport and community of speedcubing. James Macdiarmid attempts to solve over 40 Rubik's cubes in a row blindfolded.
Five years have passed and Jake has turned his back on his family. He's still up to his usual tricks in McClutchy's Bar, unaware, as he downs his latest opponent, that his eldest son, Nig, has died in a gang fight. The uncomfortable family reunion at Nig's funeral sparks a confrontation with second son, Sonny, and sets Jake and Sonny on a downward spiral.
A close examination of the Whakaari / White Island volcanic eruption of 2019 in which 22 lives were lost, the film viscerally recounts a day when ordinary people were called upon to do extraordinary things, placing this tragic event within the larger context of nature, resilience, and the power of our shared humanity.
The vampire myth is given a stylish 1960s treatment, where a human cop partners with a vampire cop to stop a vamp bent on creating a war between the two "separate but equal" races.
An airplane lands. A massive cruise boat anchors off the reef, disgorging tourists for tropical island vacations. This postcard paradise depends on petroleum imports to fuel its cars, motorbikes, boats, hotels, pumps and machinery. Yet if the tourists stopped coming, what then? The film opens with the prophetic words of Niuean artist John Pule and continues as a visual tone poem, without dialogue or narration, moving forward into the past to ask questions about the future. A young man travels back in time, from luxury resorts and lagoon tours through pandemic and population exodus, to early Christianity when missionaries incinerated his island’s atua and marae. Finally he reconnects with his tīpuna who settled the island a thousand years ago.
One-time Maori speed-chess champ, Genesis Potini, lives with a bi-polar disorder and must overcome prejudice and violence in the battle to save his struggling chess club, his family and ultimately, himself.
In 1916, the New Zealand Government secretly shipped 14 of the country's most outspoken conscientious objectors to the Western Front in an attempt to convert, silence, or quite possibly kill them. This is their story.
Inspired by true events, the story begins with Japanese rugby officials dwelling on a humiliating anniversary, a 145-17 defeat by the New Zealand All Blacks in the 1995 World Cup. Officials question their decision to appoint Eddie Jones, to coach their national team for the 2015 World Cup. Jones plans to defy convention in order to put a stop to Japan being the laughing stock of world rugby.
Something pierces the boredom and unconscious dailiness of life for a young woman working in a dress shop.
Gerry hires a car in Kaitaia with a stolen licence and travels to Invercargill with John, whose wife has just left him. The ultimate New Zealand road trip adventure.
Based on the treatment of Pacific Island families during the New Zealand Dawn Raids of the 1970’s, this short is an intimate look into a police raid, as told through the eyes of a young girl Losa and her father Lupematasila.
Two brothers; Alama and Popo, arrive for the first time in NZ as Seasonal Workers, making plenty of money to take back home to their family in Samoa. But things take a turn for the worst when Popo steals Alamas' money and runs away. Alama is determined not to return home empty handed, but the only relative that answers his call for help is Bob Titilo; an aspiring private investigator in his 40s. Alama begins to doubt his decision when Bob's unconventional methods take them on a wild goose chase. This New Action Comedy is brought to you by the Makers of hit Comedies; Three Wise Cousins and Hibiscus and Ruthless.
In November 1947 forty-one people died in a massive blaze that gutted the huge Ballantynes Department Store complex in the heart of Christchurch’s business district. This is the tragic story of New Zealand’s worst fire disaster.
Quest for the Ring
Two brothers take their father into the city for the weekend for a rugby game and a night on the town. However, the old man dies in their hotel and the boys need to smuggle his body back to their farm and make it appear that he died there to satisfy a clause in his will or else they won't inherit the property.
A baby is washed up on a Pacific Island and is adopted by a childless woman. The tribal priest takes an instant dislike to the child, proclaiming him a demon. The child is deaf and mute and therefore excluded from hunting with the other young men. Out of loneliness, he befriends a white turtle. When a drought befalls the island, the priest blames the silent one. When the chief protects the boy, the priest plots the chiefs' downfall.
Will Bastion returns home from the army after an absence of 20 years to bury his father, the former chief of thee Maori tribe, Ngati Kaipuku. The eldest son, he is reluctant to inherit his fathers role, so it is taken more willingly by his younger brother, Kahu. Kahu is the leader of a band of drug dealers and trouble-makers who ride horses through the middle of town, wrecking peoples gardens. Under the guise of refusal of a land settlement, Kahu makes a large marijuana deal with some murdering city folk. Will must choose between loyalty for his brother and his father, Maori tradition, and contemporary financial issues.
The life story of New Zealander Burt Munro, who spent years building a 1920 Indian motorcycle—a bike which helped him set the land-speed world record at Utah's Bonneville Salt Flats in 1967.