Whānau Mārama: New Zealand International Film Festival

NZIFF 2025 is coming to Hawke's Bay!

This year's festival features a hand-picked selection from the world’s most glamorous and influential film festival, with bold new works, major prize-winners and future classics from around the globe. Couldn’t make it to the red carpet this year? No worries. We’ve brought Cannes to you.

Put these dates in your diary:

23 - 25 July: Programme booklets distributed throughout Hawke's Bay. Pick one up at a venue local to you, or in the front foyer of MTG Hawke's Bay, the Century Theatre foyer or Napier Library.

31 July: Tickets go on sale.

28 August: Opening night! Followed by 10 days of multiple screenings per day, finishing on Sunday 7 September.

Opening the Festival is this year’s Palme d’Or winner, It Was Just an Accident, a politically charged thriller from acclaimed Iranian director Jafar Panahi. After years behind bars and under a filmmaking ban, Panahi returns with a gripping road movie about vengeance, memory and power. The story follows Vahid, a former political prisoner, who sets out to confront the man who tortured him. Along the way, he picks up a vanload of fellow survivors, each with their own story to tell. The result is dark, absurd, and emotionally raw.

Our Closing Night film is Sentimental Value, a Cannes Grand Prix winner directed by Joachim Trier (The Worst Person in the World). Elle Fanning and Stellan Skarsgård star as a daughter and estranged father, forced to reconnect when he announces plans to make a film about their turbulent past. Smart, moving and quietly hilarious, it is a beautiful portrait of a fractured family and the stories we tell to heal.

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