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.
Last updated on 16 July 2026
