Something to watch tonight: Wednesday 19 February

Orphans & Kingdoms (Rotondo, 2014)

Editors note

There’ll be no scheduled update tomorrow as I am booked in for a minor investigative medical procedure. Normal service will resume on Friday.

Also, in response to yesterday’s newsletter, it has been pointed out to me that (at least in New Zealand and Australia) Flicks is a more reliable guide to what’s currently streaming – and where – than JustWatch. I concur but find JW’s global comprehensiveness useful as we have subscribers from all over the world here now.

---

Back in 2013 I was editor of the New Zealand screen industry magazine OnFilm. At least I was for a couple of issues.

The title had formerly been the sector bible with a respected history going back to the start of Aotearoa’s independent scene in the 1970s but it had ceased publication a few years prior.

Under new ownership, I was asked to revive the masthead, which I did until the cheques started bouncing and the publisher’s advertising Ponzi scheme saw them get the attention of the Serious Fraud Office. I did good work in those two issues but none of it is online, sadly.

Before it all went kaput, though, I flew up to Auckland to visit the set of a small movie being shot on Waiheke Island. I don’t think it was a junket, as such, as OnFilm paid my way there rather than the production, but I did spend the day wandering around the wharf and the posh modernist house that was being used as the main location.

The film was Paolo Rotondo’s Orphans & Kingdoms and it came out about three years later, by which time I was reviewing for the RNZ website:

In the same month that Kiwi behemoth Hunt for the Wilderpeople breaks box office records with a comedic tale of a young miscreant on the run from the authorities and taken under the wing of an unlikely father figure, it seems entirely appropriate that micro-budget independent Orphans & Kingdoms should also arrive in theatres to present a dramatically alternative perspective on a strikingly similar story.

…

There’s another successful parallel with Wilderpeople and that’s the casting. Taika Waititi’s film has made Julian Dennison a star – and I hope we see plenty of him in the future – but Calae Hignett-Morgan, who plays the terrifying (and terrified) little thug Kenae, is something else entirely. The smallest actor in the film, he commands the screen whenever he’s on it. Like a character from early Scorsese, his explosive unpredictability helps give the film tension that I haven’t experienced from a local film in years.

Kenae has skipped his last foster home and hooked up with older half-siblings Tibs (Hanelle Harris) and Jesse (Jesse-James Rehu Pickery). Together they’ve arrived on sleepy Waiheke – possibly the only jurisdiction left in New Zealand where the Police take burglary seriously – and break in to one of the many luxury new-builds on the island, thinking they might be able to lie low for a while.

The owner, Jeremy (a terrifically semi-hinged performance from Colin Moy), is an Auckland businessman and on his return home from the last ferry he is greeted with a hockey stick to the back of the head. Taken captive, it seems like Jeremy – or maybe all of them – are destined for a tragic end but an accident sends things spiralling off in a different direction.

…

Casting the film was an exhaustive process – I counted 17 casting consultants in the credits, more than three times the number of speaking parts in the finished film – but every step was worthwhile as all the actors have powerful moments and all contribute to a potent ensemble.

And although Orphans & Kingdoms started as a micro-budget picture, it doesn’t look anything like it on the screen. I know that these things are often padded out by friends, family and industry generosity, but – with the help of Simon Raby’s sympathetic camerawork, Dick Reade’s sound design and Cushla Dillon’s choices in the edit suite – it looks and sounds a million bucks.

You can read the rest here.

Orphans & Kingdoms was Rotondo’s first – and still only – feature but in 2023 he made a short film adapting his own (co-written with Rob Mokaraka) stage play, Strange Resting Places, about a meeting in World War II between a young Māori soldier and an Italian deserter. The short is called Maunga Cassino. He is now the head honcho of the Italian Film Festival in New Zealand and making a strong fist of it, too.

---

---

Where to watch Orphans & Kingdoms

Aotearoa: Digital rental from NZ Film On Demand

Australia: Digital rental from Apple

Canada: Not currently available

Ireland: Digital rental from Google

India: Not currently available

USA: Streaming on Prime Video or Roku (free with ads)

UK: Not currently available