Local film The Moon is Upside Down has been impressing audiences at the Sydney Film Festival following its New Zealand premiere, and is the first feature from Wellington filmmaker Loren Taylor.
It feels about right that a film interweaving the stories of three very different women is being told by a woman doing a least three different jobs to tell it.
Taylor wrote and directed The Moon is Upside Down and stars in it. Releasing her very first feature out into the world, first to Kiwi audiences and now to the Aussies, brings all the feels.
"It feels lovely. Just lovely. It really is really lovely," the filmmaker confessed to Newshub.
This triple threat chose her wāhine well. Alongside her is Australian actor Victoria Haralabidou and renowned Kiwi actor Elizabeth Hawthorne.
Awarded the NZ Order of Merit for her services to theatre, Hawthorne absolutely shines on the big screen as a wealthy Wellingtonian called Faith.
It was role Hawthorn revelled in and was full to the brim with nothing but praise for her first-time director.
"Loren, the way you have mustered this and brought it together, corralled it, all the dreams and imagery and what you wanted to say with it, that you've brought it to this fruition - it's a remarkable achievement," Hawthorne said.
Having such an immediate strong connection between director and actor was even more critical given they had very little budget and just 22 days to shoot it.
"That's why having people who are, you know, deeply skilled - that's what makes it possible, otherwise it would just be a hot mess I think," Taylor said.
At the core of this story are the three women who anchor it and the men who inhabit their lives. Taylor cast Robbie Magasivaa and Jemaine Clement as characters taking shape in her head for a long long time.
"Being an actor, I feel like I'm in them when I am writing them," she said.
"It's extremely satisfying then when you get great actors who can deliver it like it was in your head, it was just like that - there they all were. It was just very satisfying."
The Moon Is Upside Down is still in cinemas across Aotearoa.
