97 Films & TV Shows Set In New Zealand
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Unnai Thedi
🇦🇺 Australia 🇳🇿 New ZealandUnnai Thedi (Tamil: உன்னை தேடி) is a 1999 Tamil film directed by Sundar C. The film features Ajith Kumar and Malavika in the lead roles, while an ensemble supporting cast includes Karan, Vivek, Sivakumar, and Srividya.
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When Love Comes
🇳🇿 New Zealand The 1990sSix friends...Three Kinds of Love — Between getting trashed, tripping, blowing guys off and writing songs, Mark falls for Stephen. Fig and Sally put perform Marks songs between casual sex with anyone and everyone. Katie is a few-hit wonder who hit rock-bottom in L.A and returns to New Zealand to patch her life back together. Stephen, Mark and Katie branch out for a slumber party at a beach house of their better days. Fig and Sally arrive, and not long after Eddie arrives also (Katies American guy). Mark stops running away from Stephens love, Katie and Eddie get engaged and Fig and Sally ... have sex?
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Broken English
🇳🇿 New ZealandSometimes when you make love you make war. — Ivan is the fierce patriarch of a family of Croatian refugees in Auckland. Nina is his daughter, ready to live on her own, despite his angry objections. Eddie is the Maori she takes as her lover. Nina works at a restaurant where Eddie cooks. For a price, she agrees to marry a Chinese, another restaurant employee, so that he (and his Chinese wife) can establish permanent residency. The money gives her the independence she needs to leave her parents' house and move in with Eddie. Complications arise when Eddie realizes the depth of her father's fury and the strength of Nina's family ties.
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The Whole of the Moon
🇳🇿 New ZealandThe power of friendship can provide the strength to survive. — When Kirk, a top roller-blader, discovers that he has bone cancer in his leg, his pleasant affluent life is shattered. Even though amputation provides the best chance for survival; to him, losing skating means the end of life. His friends cannot cope with his condition, but his hospital isolation is relieved by Marty - a street kid survivor who was found dying of leukemia. Marty bullies, taunts, and challenges Kirk, until he begins to climb out of his depression. Marty seems afraid of nothing and, knowing she will die, wants to experience everything.
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This documentary profiles economist and writer Marilyn Waring. In extensive interviews, Waring details her feminist approach to finances and challenges commonly accepted truths about the global economy. The filmmakers detail Waring's early rise to political prominence and her successful protests against nuclear arms. Waring also speaks candidly about wartime economies, suggesting that government policies tend to marginalize the fiscal contributions of women.
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Once Were Warriors
🇳🇿 New Zealand The 1990sA family in crisis, a life in chaos... Nothing is more powerful than a mother's love. — A drama about a Maori family living in Auckland, New Zealand. Lee Tamahori tells the story of Beth Heke’s strong will to keep her family together during times of unemployment and abuse from her violent and alcoholic husband.
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Heavenly Creatures
🇳🇿 New Zealand The 1950sNot all angels are innocent. — Wealthy and precocious teenager Juliet transfers from England to New Zealand with her family, and soon befriends the quiet, brooding Pauline through their shared love of fantasy and literature. When their parents begin to suspect that their increasingly intense and obsessive bond is becoming unhealthy, the girls hatch a dark plan for those who threaten to keep them apart.
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The Piano
🇳🇿 New Zealand The 1850sAfter a long voyage from Scotland, pianist Ada McGrath and her young daughter, Flora, are left with all their belongings, including a piano, on a New Zealand beach. Ada, who has been mute since childhood, has been sold into marriage to a local man named Alisdair Stewart. Making little attempt to warm up to Alisdair, Ada soon becomes intrigued by his Maori-friendly acquaintance, George Baines, leading to tense, life-altering conflicts.
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Bread & Roses
🇳🇿 New Zealand The 1950s The 1940sA survivor for whom mere survival was not enough — Based upon the life of activist and trade unionist (and later MP) Sonja Davies. The film covers her life up to 1956, when, at age 33, she was elected to the Nelson Hospital Board. During this period she develops strong socialist beliefs, marries and divorces, at age 17 trains as a nurse, has a romance (and a child) with an American marine who is killed in WWII action. She battles tuberculosis and marries a former boyfriend when he returns from the war. She becomes part of a women's ill-fated campaign to save the Nelson railway line from closure and begins to be elected to political bodies.
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An Angel at My Table
🇳🇿 New ZealandBased on the autobiographical work of New Zealand writer Janet Frame, this production depicts the author at various stage of her life. Afflicted with mental and emotional issues, Frame grows up in an impoverished family and experiences numerous tragedies while still in her youth, including the deaths of two of her siblings. Portrayed as an adult by Kerry Fox, Frame finds acclaim for her writing while still in a mental institution, and her success helps her move on with her life.
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Ruby and Rata
🇳🇿 New Zealand The 1980sRuby (Yvonne Lawley), an 83 year old trying to dodge a retirement home, rents a room to Rata, a solo mum with sidelines in music and benefit fraud. Rata's son is into arson and shoplifting, while Ruby's nephew (Simon Barnett) is a hapless yuppie wannabe. Marginalised by the deregulated economy of the '80s and living on their wits, they may just find common cause despite themselves in this Graeme Tetley-penned tale.
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Meet the Feebles
🇳🇿 New ZealandHell hath no fury like a hippo with a machine gun. — Heidi, the star of the "Meet The Feebles Variety Hour" discovers her lover Bletch, The Walrus, is cheating on her. And with all the world waiting for the show, the assorted co-stars must contend with drug addiction, extortion, robbery, disease, drug dealing, and murder. Meanwhile the love between two of the stars is threatened by Trevor the Rat, who wishes to exploit the young starlet for use in his porno movie.
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The Navigator: A Medieval Odyssey
🇳🇿 New Zealand The 1980s The 14th CenturyIn the 14th century a village seeking escape from the Black Death are guided by a boy's vision to tunnel into an abandoned mine and emerge into 20th century New Zealand.
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Never Say Die
🇳🇿 New ZealandWhen Your World is Turning Upside Down - Fasten Your Seatbelt — Investigative journalist Alf Winters (Morrison), meets his American girlfriend, Melissa Jones (Eilbacher), at Auckland airport. As they park outside Alf's house, it explodes. It is soon apparent that persons unknown want them dead, but the police are either skeptical or in the pay of those responsible. They play hide and seek around New Zealand with the stalkers, all the while coping with car chases, plane crashes, bullets and explosions.
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Bad Taste
🇳🇿 New ZealandA team from the intergalactic fast food chain Crumb's Crunchy Delights descends on Earth, planning to make human flesh the newest taste sensation. After they wipe out the New Zealand town Kaihoro, the country’s Astro-Investigation and Defense Service (AIaDS) is called in to deal with the problem. Things are complicated due to Giles, an aid worker who comes to Kaihoro the same day to collect change from the residents. He is captured by the aliens, and AIaDS stages a rescue mission that quickly becomes an all-out assault on the aliens’ headquarters.
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Ngati
🇳🇿 New Zealand The 1940sSet in and around the fictional town of Kapua in 1948, Ngati is the story of a Māori community. The film comprises three narrative threads: a boy, Ropata, is dying of leukaemia; the return of a young Australian doctor, Greg, and his discovery that he has Māori heritage; and the fight to keep the local freezing works open.
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Aces Go Places IV: You Never Die Twice
🇭🇰 Hong Kong 🇳🇿 New ZealandBaldy and King Kong shuttle between New Zealand and Hong Kong to recover a hi-tech prism that can impart superhuman powers.
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Footrot Flats: The Dog's Tale
🇳🇿 New ZealandFeaturing the characters from Murray Ball's "Footrot Flats", (New Zealands most beloved local cartoon strip ). Questions to be answered include: Will Wal Footrot win the affections of Cheeky Hobson over the sleazy Spit Murphy? Will the Dog win the affections of the lovely Jess? Will Wal make a good impression on the All Black selectors at Saturdays rugby match? Can Rangi and Pongo save Cooch's prize stag from the depths of Blackwater station, home of the Murphy's, their vicious dogs and deadly croco-pigs? All this and more will be answered as the small town of Raupo comes to life on the big screen.
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Pallet on the Floor
🇳🇿 New Zealand The 1960sOne of Those Blighters. — A murderous black comedy set in the 1960s. Sam (McCauley) and his small band of hard-drinking and eccentric friends are having a night of it when a drunk truck driver, Jack (Bach), attacks Sam's Maori wife Sue (O'Brien). In the struggle, Sam and friends end up killing Jack. None of them regrets this, but it has been observed by Miriam (Gruar) who decides to blackmail Sam. Jack's brother Joe (Napier) comes looking for revenge and ends up being killed by Basil (Spence). Their jobs at the freezer works are terminated, and Basil has his own idea about how to get out of their troubles.
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The Quiet Earth
🇳🇿 New ZealandThe End of the World is Just the Beginning — After a top-secret experiment misfires, a scientist may be the only man left alive in the world.
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Came a Hot Friday
🇳🇿 New Zealand The 1940sSet in post-war (1949) rural New Zealand, this film traces the efforts of two con men to run a betting scam in a small town (Tainuea) already rife with illegal gambling corruption, and eccentricity.
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Death Warmed Up
🇳🇿 New Zealand...You'll Never Want To Change Your Mind Again..! — A kid is hypnotized by a scientist to kill his parents and ends in a mental institution. As a grown up he returns to seek revenge over the scientist.
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Utu
🇳🇿 New Zealand The 1870sIn New Zealand in the 1860s the native Maori people fought the British colonials to keep the land guaranteed to them by treaty. The warrior Te Wheke fights for the British until betrayal leads him to seek utu (revenge). The settler Williamson in turn seeks revenge after Te Wheke attacks his homestead. Meanwhile Wiremu, an officer for the British, seems to think that resistance is futile.
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Goodbye Pork Pie
🇳🇿 New Zealand The 1970sGerry hires a car in Kaitaia with a stolen licence and travels to Invercargill with John, who's wife has just left him. The ultimate NZ roadtrip adventure.
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Smash Palace
🇳🇿 New ZealandShe's my daughter and I'll do what I like! — Al Shaw's life revolves around motor racing and his back country junkyard, the "Smash Palace". His French wife, Jacqui, doesn't appreciate the lack of attention due to Al's obsession with cars. When Al finds her in the arms of another man, he takes his daughter, Georgie and heads for the bush, desperately hoping to hold on to the only family he has left.
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