Celebrating DEGANZ Talent at NZIFF 2026

The highly anticipated 2026 Whānau Mārama New Zealand International Film Festival (NZIFF) is just around the corner, bringing a curated lineup of more than 130 films to audiences across the country, including works from almost 20 DEGANZ members. 

In the programme’s foreword, Artistic Director Paolo Bertolin describes the 2026 lineup as “diverse, free, and adventurous”, promising films that will “inspire, entertain, provoke, and ultimately transport you”. 

The festival opens with Big Girls Don’t Cry, following its acclaimed international run, where it was a finalist for the World Cinema Dramatic Award at Sundance and won the Grand Prix at Festival Nouvelles Vagues in France. The festival’s centrepiece film, LOMU, a powerful documentary on rugby legend Jonah Lomu, will premiere at The Civic on 1 August.

Check out the films from DEGANZ members below, and keep up to date with NZIFF to find out when you can catch them on the big screen!

 

Feature Films

Be Merry

Director: Gwen Isaac

Raised in 1980s Russell by Merry, an artist whose life became local folklore, filmmaker Gwen Isaac returns to her far-north hometown to untangle fact from family legend and confront the inheritance she carries into her own motherhood. 

Big Girls Don’t Cry

Co-Editor: Cushla Dillon

Paloma Schneideman’s coming-of-age debut launches the festival with a tender portrait of 14-year-old Sid as she tentatively traverses insecurity, identity, and desire during the summer of 2006.

Crocodile

Co-Editor: Cushla Dillon

It follows a group of teenagers and young adults from Kaduna, Nigeria, who taught themselves visual effects to make homemade, guerrilla sci-fi films with smartphones and found props.

Lomu

Director: Vea Mafileʻo

Rugby’s first global superstar was also one of its most private—a shy, gentle giant caught between two worlds, whose story mirrors Aotearoa’s own coming of age.

Special Feature Film Screenings

Out of the Blue

Director: Robert Sarkies

Dunedin’s Robert Sarkies ventured into weightier territory after Scarfies, reckoning with a defining tragedy of gun violence that rocked Aotearoa’s sense of security.

The Ungrateful Tenant

Editors: Kerri Roggio

An Auckland man endures a gauntlet of disastrous flatting situations in this silent horror-comedy film for the rental generation. 

 

Ngā Whanaunga: Aotearoa New Zealand’s Best 1

Ngā Whanaunga: Aotearoa New Zealand’s Best presents the very best of Māori and Pasifika filmmaking alongside the best films made by everyone in Aotearoa. A total of 130 films were submitted for this year’s competition, with 14 finalists chosen by the selectors.

Yes David

Director: Ghazaleh Gol

A near future where absolute compliance and obedience are strictly required.

Arrival

Director: Ahmed Osman

Assimilation via torment and curiosity. 

Tall Horses

Editor: Allan George

A charismatic tale of a thoroughbred that captured the hearts of many and tortured the heart of one.

Kurī

Editor: Sam Small

Blunt, unapologetic & beautiful, Kurī resonates.

Lady Shaka: Sonic Sands

Editor: Josh Yong

The triumph of the marginalised migrating to the world arena.

 

Ngā Whanaunga: Aotearoa New Zealand’s Best 2

Lion Rock

Directors: Prisca Bouchet & Nick Mayow

Editor: Prisca Bouchet

Writer: Nick Mayow

Slowburn with an underbelly of turmoil.

Socks

Director: Todd Karehana

Sometimes when feelings are strong, a memento is a must.

The Whole Thing

Director: Calvin Sang

Stunning production befitting of an intelligent and eloquent film.

The Return

Editor: Alex Boyd

Powerful in its restlessness and courageous for deserved acceptance.

Ciggie

Editor: Scott Milligan

Nostalgic innocence in true Kiwi style.

 

A Wave in the Ocean + Peel

A Wave in the Ocean was a 12-month intensive driven by filmmaking powerhouses Dame Jane Campion and Philippa Campbell. offering an opportunity for developing filmmakers to deepen their craft and encouraging feature filmmaking through short-film development.

A Very Good Boy

Editor: Brendon Chan

A househusband’s secret desire, leading to disaster. 

Girl Time

Director & Editor: Eleanor Bishop

Marianne is getting ready for a dreaded family dinner when two mysterious young girls appear, wanting her to play with them.

 

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Webby Wins Regional Producer Accelerator Pitch Award

Congratulations to DEGANZ board member Kim Webby, who has been awarded a $2,000 prize through Film Bay of Plenty’s Regional Producer Accelerator (RPA).

The RPA is an intensive eight-month professional development programme for emerging screen producers based in the Bay of Plenty. Offering the opportunity to work alongside Matthew Metcalfe and other experienced industry mentors, the programme is designed to build participants’ confidence in developing, pitching, and selling their projects.

As part of the programme, Kim joined the rest of the RPA cohort at Film Bay of Plenty’s Screen Connect & Pitch Evening in Rotorua, where she pitched her project live to a panel of judges and an audience of industry peers.

We look forward to hearing more about the project in the future!

 

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Jumping the Ditch: DEGANZ Members Head to MIFF

Eight films from Aotearoa are jumping the ditch and heading to the Melbourne International Film Festival (MIFF), with six films directed and/or edited by DEGANZ members.

Australia’s premier film festival and one of the world’s oldest, MIFF has been championing outstanding cinema since 1952. Alongside its film programme, the festival hosts a range of industry initiatives, including the MIFF Premiere Fund, the Accelerator Lab directors’ development programme, and the 37°South Market financing forum.

Leading the New Zealand feature slate is Big Girls Don’t Cry, co-edited by DEGANZ member Cushla Dillon. Cushla also edited feature documentary Crocodile, while fellow member Vea Mafile’o directed the documentary Lomu, giving Aotearoa a strong presence across both narrative and documentary filmmaking.

DEGANZ members Ahmed Osman, Prisca Bouchet, Nick Mayow, and Todd Karehana also have short films screening in Accelerator Shorts 1, a showcase celebrating emerging filmmaking voices from Aotearoa and Australia.

Read more about the films below:

Features

Big Girls Don’t Cry

Co-Editor: Cushla Dillon

Set in a coastal New Zealand town over the summer of 2006, this queer coming-of-age story – executive-produced by Jane Campion – is a bittersweet slice of pre-smartphone-era teendom.

The debut feature from writer/director Paloma Schneideman, a former MIFF Accelerator Lab participant and graduate of Jane Campion’s film school program A Wave in the Ocean, Big Girls Don’t Cry is a sensitive, intimate and unflinchingly honest portrayal of queer adolescence. Ani Palmer’s remarkable debut performance steers the film, conveying Sid’s youthful angst, burgeoning sexual curiosity and uneasiness in her own skin with impressive restraint, while Noah Taylor plays a key supporting role.

Crocodile

Co-Editor: Cushla Dillon

Spanning 13 years, this lively documentary chronicles the incredible rise of a group of young Nigerian filmmakers working outside the system.

When The Critics, as they call themselves, first formed, its members were not even teenagers. Though the Nigerian cinema emerging from the Nollywood hub of Lagos is famously prolific, the collective’s members live hundreds of kilometres away in the northern city of Kaduna (also known as Croc City). New Zealand director Pietra Brettkelly worked with behind-the-scenes footage – shot over more than a decade by The Critics themselves – to co-author an account of their story to date. Tracing the group’s burgeoning political consciousness alongside their creative development and launching its international festival run at this year’s Berlinale, Crocodile reveals the tensions that arise between members as well as the harsh realities that their love of cinema has enabled them to transcend.

Lomu

Co-Director: Vea Mafile’o

A nuanced portrait of Kiwi Tongan rugby union superstar Jonah Lomu, history’s youngest All Black, whose legend remains a beacon for Pasifika pride.

A humble, staunch Lomu emerges here in intimate interviews with his closest family, friends and coaches, along with archival footage and previously unseen family videos. Sensitively stewarding Lomu’s world-spanning legacy are Dublin native Gavin Fitzgerald, known for documentary profiles of Liam Gallagher and Conor McGregor, and Kiwi Tongan trailblazer Vea Mafile’o (Lea Tupu’anga, MIFF 2024; For My Father’s Kingdom, MIFF 2019).

Shorts

Arrival

Director: Ahmed Osman

After arriving in Aotearoa as refugees, a mother and daughter find their roles upended in the face of a new and unfamiliar world.

The tension between leaving home and facing the unknown is at the core of this sensitive, emotionally engaging drama from Somalian-born, Wellington-raised filmmaker Ahmed Osman, who drew upon his own memories to evoke the experience of a child forced to navigate the world on behalf of their parent. A delicate, playful work about loss, memory and the cost of starting anew.

Lion Rock

Directors: Prisca Bouchet & Nick Mayow

Editor: Prisca Bouchet

Writer: Nick Mayow

While driving along an eerie ocean road, a teenage boy and his mother hit something with their car. She insists it was nothing, but he begins to doubt her story.

Inspired by a trip through Auckland’s spooky Waitākere Ranges, the latest work from award-winning filmmakers Prisca Bouchet and Nick Mayow is a unique take on the coming-of-age drama, transforming a routine drive into a mysterious thriller told from the boy’s perspective. Produced in conjunction with Jane Campion’s film school, A Wave in the Ocean, this brilliantly executed short film premiered at Venice last year.

Socks

Writer/Director: Todd Karehana

A beautifully restrained tale of queer yearning, in which a young Māori boy develops an unlikely bond with a Mormon missionary in rural New Zealand.

Filmed in timeless black-and-white and anchored by a phenomenal performance by young star Monty Walker, Todd Karehana’s gentle coming-of-age film – executive-produced by Jane Campion, and debuting at the Venice International Film Festival – has all the makings of a crowd-pleasing queer classic. Socks is an evocative look at male friendship that transcends culture, religion and desire.

 

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DEGANZ Watch List: From Buck to Betrayal

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From bold local storytelling and thought-provoking documentaries to standout commercials and binge-worthy television, this edition of the DEGANZ Watch List celebrates the latest work from our members across a range of formats.

Director Jamie Lawrence (DEGANZ) is behind Kiwibank’s newest and cutest mascot, Buck the sheep, while fellow member Liv McClymont directed the drama sequences for the NZ Herald’s six-part web series Under the Influence.

On the editing side, DEGANZ board member Martin Brinkler ACE edited Stories About My Body, a feature-length pro shot of Morgana O’Reilly’s hit comedy theatre show, blending live performance with newly filmed scenes. Meanwhile, assistant editor Megan Robinson (DEGANZ) worked on the latest season of the hit reality series The Traitors NZ.

Buck the System

Commercial

Director: Jamie Lawrence

Kiwibank’s newest campaign introduces a plucky sheep named Buck. While most sheep are happy following the flock, Buck chooses her own path and rejects the status quo.

 

Stories About My Body

Theatre Pro Shot / Feature Film

Editor: Martin Brinkler ACE

In a tiny theatre in Aotearoa, New Zealand, four teenage stagehands work tirelessly to help Morgana tell the stories that shaped her – from her own teenagehood in 1998, to working foot-fetish parties in New York City, to falling in love and later birthing her babies in a Melbourne living room. By turns vulnerable and riotously funny, she moves from lamenting her chins to marvelling at her cellular functions, using her body as the living template for every tale she tells. Created and performed by Morgana O’Reilly (The White Lotus) and co-directed with her husband and real-life birth partner, 2025 BAFTA nominee Peter Salmon (After The Party), Stories About My Body blends nudity, heart-swelling honesty and real birth footage into a stand-up comedy special like no other – intimate, fearless and unexpectedly profound.

Stories About My Body is celebrating its NZ theatrical premiere with select special screenings before releasing to wider cinemas from 30 July. Find a screening new you here.

 

The Traitors NZ (Season 3)

Reality Series

Assistant Editor: Megan Robinson

Hosted by Madeleine Sami, the hit psychological strategy game returns with more twists and betrayals. Follow the cast of 21 Kiwi players as they compete with their eyes on the rising prize money.

Available to stream on Three Now.

 

Under the Influence

Factual Web Series

Drama Director: Liv McClymont

A compelling new six-part web series investigating the harm social media is doing to young people in Aotearoa and what parents and teens can do to fight back.

Available to watch on NZ Herald and YouTube.

 

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Webby and Cluka Honoured at the 2026 Doc Edge Awards

The 2026 Doc Edge Awards were a successful night for DEGANZ members, with DEGANZ board member Kim Webby receiving the Raye Freedman Legacy Award and fellow member Aaron J Cluka winning the Best Tertiary Film Award for Stoats’ Last Stand.

Held at the Grand Millennium Hotel in Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland, the awards celebrated outstanding documentaries, immersive projects, and filmmakers from around the world, with more than 30 accolades presented across the evening. The winners were selected by an 11-member jury from Aotearoa and overseas, including DEGANZ board member and documentarian Rebecca Tansley.

After its debut last year, the Raye Freedman Legacy Award is in its second year of honouring a woman who embodies the spirit of Raye Freedman, a passionate supporter of education, music and the arts. Kim was recognised not only for her documentary Unlikely Kin, which screened as part of this year’s festival, but also for her decades-long contribution to documentary filmmaking and journalism. Alongside the award itself, Kim will receive a $5,ooo cash prize.

Aaron received the Best Tertiary Film Award for Stoats’ Last Stand, a short documentary exploring Waiheke Island’s community-led efforts to eradicate stoats, an invasive predator that has devastated Aotearoa’s native birdlife. Backed by iwi, local communities, and sponsors, the project highlights the positive impact of these conservation efforts, with stoat numbers declining and native bird populations beginning to recover.

Executive Director Tui Ruwhiu attended the awards, which he reflected on in his blog ‘Documenting Winners‘ this week.

Congratulations, Kim, Aaron, and all the Doc Edge Award winners!

 

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