Auckland Online Film Festival 2021
NZIFF is skipping Auckland this year due to lockdown, but this online film festival experience is here to fill the gap.
Overview
For locked-down Aucklanders facing another week at Level 3, it's even more of a blow watching film buffs in Wellington, Christchurch and the rest of the country head out to cinemas for this year's NZIFF. But you don't have to completely miss out or substitute it with yet another re-watch of The Office. Instead, one Auckland film buff has created his own online version to give a little home-viewing inspiration.
American-born but NZ-based film director and editor Doug Dillaman and a team of industry friends have used movie-recommendation site Letterboxd to compile a list of 198 films and 18 shorts available on streaming services and video-on-demand — and they're calling it the Auckland Online Film Festival.
Many of these films aren't new but, as Dillman wrote on the 'festival's' Letterboxd page, the list is a means of filling "the gaping vacuum for disconsolate film lovers" following the cancellation of NZIFF in Auckland. "After all, we can't go to the cinemas, but we do have a bounty at our fingertips – if you can find it!" the description reads.
Included in the lineup is locally filmed thriller Coming Home in the Dark, Dev Patel-starring fantasy-adventure flick The Green Knight and 90s coming-of-age heart-breaker Beautiful Thing.
Each recommendation can be caught on streaming services such as Neon, Amazon Prime and Netflix, meaning that even after NZIFF comes to an end later this month, it still remains a handy resource for Kiwis around the country to find a film worthy of a weekend watch.
Information
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