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Two weeks of exciting, stimulating, fascinating and moving films will come to the capital as the 2010 New Zealand International Film Festival makes a stop in Wellington this winter from 16 July - 1 August 2010.

See the full programme for Wellington below. Tickets are on sale now from Ticketek.

The NZ International Film Festival will open in Wellington with the world premiere of Predicament. The NZ-made feature stars Jemaine Clement from Flight of the Conchords, musician Tim Finn and is directed by Wellington filmmaker Jason Stutter.

The opening night film is a key slot in the Festival line-up which opens in Wellington on July 16. Jane Campion’s Bright Star opened the Festival in 2009.

Predicament is a crime comedy from the novel of the same name by Ronald Hugh Morrison, author of New Zealand classics Came A Hot Friday and The Scarecrow. The film will close the Auckland leg of the Festival on July 25 after its world premiere in Wellington.

"To have Predicament's first public screening in my favourite city in the world is just brilliant. The Wellington film family have put a lot of love into this movie, it feels right to show it at home first and to open the festival is a real honour," says director Jason Stutter. 

For full ticketing information go to the NZ International Film Festival website.

2010 NZ Film Festival Programme Highlights

Festival organisers have confirmed two NZ-made documentaries are in the line-up.

Clive Neeson’s Last Paradise traces the evolution of extreme adventure sports in NZ and recently won the prestigious ‘Ambassador of Green’ award at X Dance - The Academy Awards of Action Sports Film held annually in Salt Lake City, Utah.

Robin Greenberg’s The Free China Junk tells the story of five young fishermen who in 1955 left Taiwan on an old traditional Chinese junk to cross the Pacific despite the fact that none of them had ever sailed a junk on open seas before.

The latest film announcement is Animal Kingdom. The best Australian badass movie since Chopper – and upping the felon count dramatically – David Michôd's Animal Kingdom  is a coolly measured picture of a violent Melbourne crime family imploding in the iron grip of its pint-sized matriarch.

Other recent Festival confirmations include There Once Was an Island by NZ filmmaker Briar March, which documents the plight of a small island community in the Pacific faced with rising sea-levels due to climate change. French prison drama and Cannes 2009 Grand Jury prize winner A Prophet will screen as well as Banksy’s documentary Exit Through the Gift Shop. Sergio Leone’s Once Upon a Time in the West starring Henry Fonda and Charles Bronson will screen as part of the retrospective programme in Auckland, Wellington and Dunedin.

15 New Zealand cities and towns host the annual International Film Festival which is now known as the New Zealand International Film Festival.

The Festival will travel around the country finishing in Whangarei in November. Until last year each region has been promoted with the region’s name despite sharing a common programme and artwork since 2002. The Festival has grown nationally since the merging in 1984 of the Auckland International Film Festival (founded in 1969) and the Wellington Film Festival (1972).

In 2009 the NZIFF was held in Wellington, Auckland, Dunedin, Christchurch, Palmerston North, Napier, Tauranga, Hamilton, New Plymouth, Nelson, Greymouth, Masterton, Levin, Gisborne and Whangarei. The Festival is operated by the New Zealand Film Festival Trust, a charitable trust established in 1996.

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