Homegrown: Drama

Homegrown: Drama is a group of New Zealand short films (though 2 were made overseas).

I've ordered these from best to worst in my opinion.

3 Hours
Set in Baghdad, but filmed in Jordan (everyone's favourite stand-in for Iraq), using Iraqi refugees as actors, this was the best of the short films. It is based on real events when unidentified militants killed some children in a mixed Shia-Sunni neighbourhood sparking off a 3 hour gun battle between neighbours who blamed each other for the killings. The heat of the moment reactions and miss-identifications are realistically portrayed in a 14 minute film.

Darryn Exists
Unpublished novelists are subjects of fun. As are romance novelists. Penelope is both. Will she find love? Surreal in places, but no more than it should be.

Hauraki
In a drive across the Hauraki plains a carsick girl provokes a very Kiwi argument between her mother and a farmer's wife. There is a happy ending.

With My Little Eye
Mother, daughter and a man that might be her father go away for a weekend somewhere in Australia. Daughter averts a rape.

Elaine Rides Again
An odd little film about an anxious, religious mother who is concerned about her daughter and boyfriend. Cakes are used a punctuation.

Monifa
A simple film about a young African refugee girl in suburban New Zealand trying to cope with memories and a loud boy.

No bicycle helmets were worn in the making of these films.