Verve’s film picks for the month of July.
FROCKS & DIVAS
7 July
Frocks and Divas is a fun, frivolous and fabulous journey of the extraordinary women who perform at the Tarnished Frocks and Divas Festival – a platform for these dazzling women to express themselves and show their colours through a meaningful, positive artform. The incredible genuine Kiwi personalities captured on screen will warm hearts and provide laughs and a cinema experience like no other.
Directed by Paul and Sass Innes, starring Jackie Clarke and Annie Crummer.
BENEDICTION
7 July
Benediction explores the turbulent life of first world war poet, Siegfried Sassoon, through the eyes of revered filmmaker Terence Davies. Sassoon’s life-long quest for personal salvation through his experiences with family, war, his writing, and destructive relationships goes unresolved, never realising it can only come from within.
Directed by Terence Davies, starring Jack Lowden and Peter Capaldi.
PUNCH
NZIFF 28 July – 7 August
Oscar-nominee Tim Roth stars in this coming-of-age film, shot on Auckland’s wild west coast. Seventeen-year-old boxer Jim (Jordan Oosterhof) carries the hopes and dreams of his father (Roth) on his shoulders, but his growing relationship with another local boy forces him to confront the truth about his sexuality and choose his own future.
Directed by Welby Ings.
CORSAGE
NZIFF 28 July – 7 August
Lushly decorated and costumed, and cheekily anachronistic with its use of 21st-century pop songs and salty language, Corsage looks at the later life of Empress Elisabeth of Austria, aka ‘Sissi’ (1837-1898), the latest historic royal woman to get biographical treatment.
Directed by Marie Kreutzer.
