Festivals

AWARDS + NOMINATIONS
Manchester International Short Film Festival - Newcomer Award, winner!
Toronto International Film Festival - Best International Short Film, nominee
Kyiv International Film Festival Molodist - Best Short Film, nominee
NORTH AMERICA
Toronto International Film Festival
New Orleans Film Festival
HollyShorts Film Festival
Chicago International Children’s Film Festival
Miami Film Festival
Newport Beach Film Festival
Bushwick Film Festival
Dumbo Film Festival
EUROPE
PÖFF Shorts Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival
Odense International Film Festival
Drama International Short Film Festival
Kyiv International Film Festival Molodist
FilmFestival Kitzbühel
International Short Film Week Regensburg
Concorto Film Festival
Still Voices Short Film Festival
Exground Filmfest
Kinofilm Manchester International Short Film Festival
OCEANIA
Wairoa Māori Film Festival
Whānau Mārama: New Zealand International Film Festival

team

In Association with THE NEW ZEALAND FILM COMMISSION
Producer JOHNNY LYON
Casting Director + Acting Coach STU TURNER, CATCH CASTING
Cinematographer MARIA INES MANCHEGO and EOIN O’LIDDIGH

Post Production Sound Facility BESPOKE POST
Sound Design + Re-Recording Mixer AMY BARBER
Post Production Facility DEPARTMENT OF POST
Colorist JULIAN DYSON

BACKGROUND

While growing up in the rural Far North, I was always drawn to the town of Moerewa. Located on the side of New Zealand’s only Northland-bound highway, it is a town easily passed by. For me, I was always pulled in by its colourful houses, closed shop fronts covered in murals and looming meatworks. This town served as the inspiration for my first film, Shadow Cut.

Shadow Cut’s characters and themes also hold personal significance as they were inspired and based upon experiences my friends and I shared while growing up in the Far North. These ideas and remembrances sparked the development of Shadow Cut’s screenplay, which was in turn granted support from the New Zealand Film Commission’s Short Film Fund, Kōpere Hou - Fresh Shorts.

APPROACH

As Shadow Cut is rooted in truth it was important the film retained its authenticity. With this, neorealist filmmaking techniques influenced the production; non-actors were cast from the area, we shot on location and predominately only used available light.

During the casting and rehearsal process we had the great pleasure of working with Stu Turner, a skilled casting director experienced in working with young non-actors. Our casting process occurred over several months and entailed holding auditions at every school in the region. After meeting with and auditioning over 200 students, holding multiple workshops and recall sessions, fourteen-year-old Matenga Ashby (Boy) and sixteen-year-old Kyla Moffat (Girl) were cast in the lead roles. We were not only impressed by Matenga and Kyla’s acting abilities and raw talent, but also by the way they engaged with and related to the story and its characters. Tangaroa Pireroa (Boy on Bus) and Troy Kingi (Uncle Kingi), the film’s only professional actor, were also cast from the local area.

Once casting was finalised, we met with Matenga and Kyla 2-3 times per week for nearly 3 months. It was important Matenga and Kyla felt ownership of their character and completely comfortable with the material. We held personal workshop-based rehearsals, exchanged stories about our experiences growing up in the area, what it meant to them to be from Northland and what hopes they had for their future. We related their personal experiences to our script analysis work, delving deeper into their characters and their story. The script was then further developed with Matenga and Kyla’s stories and experiences in mind, bringing it new authenticity.

During these months we continued to grow closer to the characters of Boy and Girl by working on silent takes, ad libbing, playing games and going to lunch in character and rehearsing on location in Moerewa.

It was not only crucial that Matenga and Kyla felt comfortable with their characters but also with each other. Their relationship in the film is undefinable, tender, intimate and truthful. While the workshops and sharing of stories helped develop this relationship off camera, we also spent a lot of time just hanging out - going to the movies, the theatre and having lunch together.

We took a similar personal approach when organising our shooting locations. It was important for production to work with the local community. We wanted to make sure there was a mutual trust and friendship between Moerewa and the Shadow Cut production. Through exisiting relationships, and the new relationships we built, we received a beautiful support and kindness from the community. We were able to shoot on the streets of Moerewa, at local houses and in the town’s meatworks. These relationships also led to casting of our extras and gave us the ability to capture cinéma vérité style shots of the town and its locals. The weeks we spent rehearsing and filming in Moerewa were some one of the best creative and personal experiences I have had.

I always considered Moerewa to be Shadow Cut’s other main character. By choosing to shoot with anamorphic lenses we were able show more of the environment and cinematically present a world that is often overlooked. By presenting the beauty of this sleepy ‘drive through’ town we hoped to show the two sides of Boy and Girl’s home and the difficulty of their late night decision.

In post we wanted to further bring the audience into Boy and Girl’s’ personal intimate world. We refrained from using music, and instead used audio recorded in Moerewa to create a textural soundscape that reflected the main characters’ personal journeys. We also adopted a more emotive editing style for each characters’ emotional disclosure. For Girl, we supported the reveal of her vulnerability by interweaving two scenes to create a sensitive dream-like effect. For Boy, we heighten the reveal of his voice and his power by juxtaposing jarring non-linear cuts.

While Shadow Cut is an intimate story, told from a very small part of the world with a distinct voice, it hopes to engage with an international audience on a personal level, taking them on a journey that connects them to their own coming of age and feelings of finding independence and self.