NZIFF’s Best of the Best

Congratulations to DEGANZ member and 2024 MIFF Accelerator Lab participant Vea Mafile’o for winning this year’s NZIFF Patron Award for Best Film with Lea Tupu’anga/Mother Tongue! Alongside the prestigious award, Vea received a $7,500 cash prize.

The film was part of Whānau Mārama: New Zealand International Film Festival’s (NZIFF) NZ’s Best short film programme, which premiered in Te Whanganui-a-Tara Wellington on 6 August. The festival presented the awards in Tāmaki Makarau Auckland on 18 August as part of the Aotearoa Film Focus weekend. Producer Phillipa Campbell, filmmaker Judah Finnigan, and film critic Liam Maguren made up this year’s jury.

Other films in the programme included I See You, directed by Briar March (DEGANZ), and First Horse, directed by 2024 MIFF Accelerator Lab participant Awanui Simich-Pene and edited by Cushla Dillon (DEGANZ). Awanui took home the Auckland Live Spirit of The Civic Award for First Horse.

Lea Tupu’anga/Mother Tongue follows a young speech therapist who has lied about her language skills for a job. She must find a new way to communicate when she is assigned to an elderly Tongan patient with aphasia who can no longer speak English.

Vea was attending the MIFF Accelerator Lab at the time of the awards, but shared with NZIFF,

I feel incredibly honored and proud to receive such a prestigious award, especially on the eve of Uike Kātoanga’i ‘o e lea faka-Tonga – Tonga Language Week. This film represents the different cultural journeys we are all on. There are many paths and different experiences. Everyone’s cultural identity and sense of belonging looks different. But it’s what you feel in your heart that counts the most. This is loto-māfana.

Well done to all the filmmakers who’s films screened during this year’s festival. That’s a wrap on NZIFF 2024!

Last updated on 29 August 2024