While arts funding has been slashed and our creative industries left in a deeply dark place, our cinemas have been beacons of hope in showcasing a steady stream of innovative, fresh local stories. It will be a long time before I forget the breathless silence in the room as the credits rolled on M\u0101rama, Taratoa Stappard\u2019s gothic colonisation horror<\/a>, nor the deep belly laugh elicited from Samuel Austin\u2019s delivery of a single word \u2013 \u201cbouldering\u201d \u2013 in Sports Team and Horse Bite\u2019s cannibal comedy The Weed Eaters<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n The memorable reactions have just kept coming. There were the tears streaming at the end of Chelsie Preston Crayford\u2019s profound love letter to mothers and daughters<\/a> in Caterpillar, the jangled nerves as Connor Bowden\u2019s The Ungrateful Tenant rendered the Auckland rental market in black and white<\/a>, and the smart, stomach-turning viscera of Thunderlips\u2019 slime-fest Mum, I\u2019m Alien Pregnan<\/a>t. Then there\u2019s Paloma Schneideman\u2019s Big Girls Don\u2019t Cry, the raw coming-of-age catharsis<\/a> which will destroy any former teenager in its wake.<\/p>\n All films that left indelible impressions, and all films made by first timers. So why is it that 2026 has seen such a groundswell in bold debuts? Over the last few days, weeks and months, I\u2019ve asked the directors themselves how and why they think these cinematic stars aligned.<\/p>\n The unlikely incubator<\/p>\n The Covid-19 lockdowns may feel like a long time ago but, as it turns out, feature films take a long time to make. Several filmmakers mentioned the lockdowns as pivotal in eventually leading them to their debut feature films. \u201cWe were forced to go into incubation and really look inwards,\u201d Big Girls Don\u2019t Cry director Paloma Schneideman told The Spinoff last month<\/a>. \u201cI did write a lot of the film throughout that period, and I do think we\u2019re seeing a run-on effect of that now.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Chelsie Preston Crayford agrees. \u201cWe had so much time, and we had to create new structure and meaning in our own lives,\u201d she says. Having come up with the idea for Caterpillar two years prior at a New Zealand Film Commission mentoring programme, she recalls a remote scriptwriting course in lockdown helping her to work through an early draft of the film. \u201cI just remember I was chipping away on this craft that was really new to me,\u201d she says.\u00a0<\/p>\n Other makers also used the time to hone their technical skills. Connor Bowden started making short black and white films on his iPhone during the lockdowns, using himself and his parents as talent. He credits these as the genesis for his first feature-length silent film The Ungrateful Tenant. \u201cThat time taught me a whole new way of working which meant, when it got to 2022, and I was itching to make a feature, I knew confidently that I could just make a start.\u201d<\/p>\n For Taratoa Stappard, Covid-19 saw him return from \u201cdisaster zone\u201d England to \u201cperfect bubble New Zealand\u201d to make Taumanu as part of TVNZ\u2019s indigenous supernatural anthology Beyond the Veil<\/a>. \u201cThat was the first time I was being supported to tell a story from te ao M\u0101ori,\u201d he says. \u201cIt gave me the confidence to push forward with this idea I had about a young M\u0101ori woman who is mysteriously summoned to Victorian England.\u201d Five years later, that idea became M\u0101rama.\u00a0<\/p>\n The funding factor<\/p>\n While several of the first-time features this year received funding from the New Zealand Film Commission, with the likes of Schneideman praising their \u201cchampioning of brave voices\u201d and Thunderlips singling out the \u201cgood taste\u201d of head of funding Ainsley Gardiner in particular, there\u2019s nearly just as many films seeing the light of day in 2026 that sought their financial backing entirely outside of traditional funding pathways.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n In Wh\u0101nau M\u0101rama alone, local debut films Uncle<\/a>, In Search of My Moehau<\/a> and The Ungrateful Tenant<\/a> all crowdfunded their way into existence or were paid for by the makers themselves. \u201cWe put so much time and effort into funding applications and were always so disheartened when they were rejected,\u201d says Jonathan Watt of lo-fi mockumentary Moehau. \u201cWe decided that we might be better off putting our time and energy into just shooting things ourselves instead.\u201d<\/p>\n It\u2019s a similar story for Uncle, a reflection on modern M\u0101ori masculinity made in just 16 days across various locations around Porirua. \u201cWe didn\u2019t wait for permission to make this film. We simply started with a story we believed in and found people who believed in it too,\u201d producer Julia Brown told Scoop<\/a> in July. \u201cUncle exists because of the generosity of our wh\u0101nau, friends and community, who gave their time, opened their homes and helped bring the film to life.\u201d<\/p>\n And then there\u2019s crowdfunded cult classic The Weed Eaters, which director Callum Devlin told The Spinoff earlier this year<\/a> was born out of a fear of funding applications \u201ceating 10 years of life away\u201d before they were able to make something. \u201cWe didn\u2019t want to go for the traditional funding route because we wanted less pressure,\u201d added co-producer Annabel Kean. \u201cWe wanted to be able to do a first pancake and have the freedom to learn and make mistakes.\u201d<\/p>\n The end of cultural cringe<\/p>\n Even though these debut films are vastly different in subject matter and style, all feel united by something much more vibes-based \u2013 a newfound sense of confidence, voice and assuredness that feels entirely at odds with any old ideas of cultural cringe in Aotearoa. How else could Caterpillar have pulled off a three-protagonist intergenerational story, or M\u0101rama represent the first M\u0101ori gothic horror in film history, or Mum, I\u2019m Alien Pregnant storm the midnight slot at Sundance?\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ve noticed it too and I think it\u2019s really exciting \u2013 we\u2019re starting to feel ourselves a little bit more,\u201d Schneideman says. \u201cIt doesn\u2019t feel competitive at all, there\u2019s a lot of collective pride which feels different to the kind of tall poppy syndrome one might expect. Maybe we\u2019re finally outgrowing that.\u201d Stappard agrees. \u201cThere does seem to be a new, muscular sort an energy happening\u2026 a shifting of confidence to own it and celebrate yourself a bit more.\u201d<\/p>\n So much to celebrate, and so much to come. With many of these titles still showing in Wh\u0101nau M\u0101rama across the country, Mum, I\u2019m Alien Pregnant and Big Girls Don\u2019t Cry will also have their nationwide cinematic releases in September and October respectively, along with local meta comedy-documentary Pop<\/a>. Also, keep your eyes peeled for growing buzz around Alex Liu\u2019s debut God Bless You, Mr Kopu \u2013 it\u2019s premiering in the Toronto International Film Festival<\/a> next month.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s nothing like seeing other people from Aotearoa out there finding international success to feel like it\u2019s actually possible,\u201d says Kean. \u201cIt\u2019s exciting to see how much international interest these movies are getting \u2013 they\u2019re so local, but they resonate with people all over the world,\u201d adds Thunderlips on this new wave of filmmakers. \u201cOur cinema is diverse, brave, and always changing. We\u2019re all working with pretty small budgets, but managing to punch well above our weight.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It\u2019s been a stonking good year for bold, weird, fresh debut feature films. Alex Casey goes on a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":571185,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[156,409,111,139,69,73268,281585,252827,1066],"class_list":["post-571184","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-entertainment","tag-movies","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-nz-film","tag-nz-film-commission","tag-nziff","tag-pop-culture"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/571184","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=571184"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/571184\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/571185"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=571184"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=571184"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=571184"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Taratoa Stappard\u2019s M\u0101ori gothic horror M\u0101rama. (Photo: Supplied)<\/p>\n
Caterpillar is Chelsie Preston Crayford\u2019s debut feature film. (Photo: Supplied)<\/p>\n
Connor Bowden used a combo of crowdfunding and self-funding to make The Ungrateful Tenant. (Photo: Supplied)<\/p>\n
Ani Palmer and Rain Spencer in Paloma Schneideman\u2019s Big Girls Don\u2019t Cry. (Photo: Jen Raoult)<\/p>\n