Following stints as writer and actor in work such as Top of The Lake, Jane Campion’s television series, and Taika Waititi’s Eagle vs Shark (2007), Loren Taylor makes her feature directorial debut, winner of Best First Feature at the Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival, with this bittersweet triptych following three women struggling with their New Zealand lives. Russian mail-order bride Natalia (Victoria Haralabidou) finds that her prospective groom (Jemaine Clement) and his sister have not been fully honest with her. Frazzled anaesthetist Briar (Taylor) is sleepwalking through a long-distance relationship with her sister’s ex. Neglected housewife Faith (Elizabeth Hawthorne) finds a woman’s body in one of her husband’s properties and determines to give her a proper send-off. Laced with that uniquely dry New Zealand sense of humour, there is nevertheless an undercurrent of melancholy to this sharply observed and striking debut.

Notes by Kevin Coyne.