Get the popcorn ready, Kiwis: New Zealand's very own Documentary Edge Festival is here with plenty of colourful and award-winning feature films to enjoy.
One of those films is Stevenson: Lost and Found, based around the life of one of New York's most prolific cartoonists - and it's directed by Wellington's very own filmmaker Sally Williams.
Williams isn't your typical Kiwi. For starters, she's a part-time New Yorker and was a full-time friend to one of the city's most loved cartoonists, James Stevenson - best known for his six-decade career with the New Yorker magazine.
"I planted the seed with Jim. I said you would make a really good documentary, your life is so fascinating and he batted it away, it took three or four years before it came full circle," Williams said.
Williams met Stevenson by accident, but it quickly turned into a lifelong friendship - and 17 years later, Williams made his life into a documentary playing as part of the Documentary Edge Festival on Friday.
"We'd often see each other at parties, and neither he nor I wanted to be in the other room talking to people, so we would sit in the kitchen and talk about life. I was 21, he was 60 or 70 and this unlikely friendship blossomed,” Williams told Newshub.
And it blossomed so much, Williams wanted the world to understand everything about his fascinating life - both the highs and the lows.
“In the film we see Stevenson go through dementia and in fact, when we started filming in 2014 we knew he was at the early stages but we didn't know how quickly it would progress,” Williams said.
The end product is a legacy to the life he left behind.
"He did die while we were making the film, and I missed him as a friend, but it did motivate the team to put a film out there that would make him proud," Williams told Newshub.
An ode to one of the great creatives, brought to life by his unlikely but very much loved Kiwi friend.
