The debut feature film from New Zealand filmmakers Mark Albiston & Louis Sutherland, and second feature from Warp Films Australia, has been selected for the 2013 Sundance Film Festival. The film will have its world premiere as part of the World Dramatic Competition.
Synopsis
Set in New Zealand 1981, muscle cars, racial tensions and a thieving bird all inform the small town life of half-Samoan brothers Willie and Solomon. After a chance encounter with charismatic thief Bennie and his close-knit gang of ‘shoppers’, Willie is seduced into a criminal world that allows him to escape mounting tensions with his volatile father. But as Bennie’s hold over him grows, Willie finds himself in over his head; and when Solomon is left to fend for himself at home, Willie’s two worlds collide with shattering consequences.
About the film
Produced by Warp Films Australia’s Anna McLeish and Sarah Shaw (producers of Cannes awarded Snowtown) Shopping was shot earlier this year on the Kapiti Coast and in Wellington, New Zealand and stars Jacek Koman (Moulin Rouge, Australia, Defiance, The Hunter) as Bennie; and introduces Kevin Paulo as Willie and Julian Dennison as Solomon.
Shopping was financed by the New Zealand Film Commission with support from Fulcrum Media Finance. It will be distributed in New Zealand and Australia by Madman Entertainment with a New Zealand theatrical release currently scheduled for 2013. NZ Film, the sales arm of the NZFC, is handling world sales of the film.
About the filmmakers
Albiston and Sutherland are the writing/directing team behind acclaimed New Zealand shorts The Six Dollar Fifty Man and Run. Both films were honoured by the Cannes Short Film jury with a Special Distinction in the Short Film Competition at the 2009 and 2007 (respectively) Cannes International Film Festival. The Six Dollar Fifty Man also received the Jury Prize for International Short Filmmaking at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival and was long-listed for the 2011 Academy Awards.
