This year we raised enough money for SIFF to sponsor three films. After the votes were tallied, we chose the following films:

DON’T LET’S GO TO THE DOGS TONIGHT
Actress Embeth Davidtz (Schindler’s List) makes her feature directorial debut, adapting Alexandra Fuller’s bestselling memoir about a precocious eight-year-old farmgirl who witnesses Rhodesia’s tumultuous political shift in the early 1980s.

JOHN CRANKO
Sam Riley (Control) stuns in this biopic about South African dancer and choreographer John Cranko, who overcame self-destructive habits and homophobic persecution as he whipped the 1960s Stuttgart Ballet into an internationally renowned dance company.

KA WHAWHAI TONU: STRUGGLE WITHOUT END
Cliff Curtis and Temuera Morrison (both of 1994’s Once Were Warriors) star in this sweeping Māori-language epic about the 1864 Battle of Ōrākau, as an Indigenous tribe defends their land from invading British forces.