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‘The Australian Dream’.

This year’s Melbourne International Film Festival (Miff) opener – director Daniel Gordon’s The Australian Dream – has proved an audience favourite, winning the Audience Award for Best Documentary Feature.

The film, which was also nominated for an Aacta Award earlier this week, explores race, identity and belonging from the perspective of former Sydney Swans captain and Australian of the Year, Adam Goodes. Written by Stan Grant, it opened at Miff to a seven minute standing ovation.

The winner of the Best Narrative Feature went to Celine Sciamma’s Portrait of a Lady on Fire, which depicts a romance between a painter and her subject. It won Best Screenplay and the Queer Palm in Cannes earlier this year.

John Sheedy’s debut feature H is For Happiness, which stars Daisy Axon, Wesley Patten,, Richard Roxburgh, Emma Booth, Miriam Margolyes, Joel Jackson and Deborah Mailman, was the runner up in the narrative awards.

Most portmanteau features are potluck. But “Vai” has a lovely consistency of style and content that heightens the accessibility of its unique value as a combined effort among eight native female directors from eight different Pacific Island cultures. The task of each writer-helmer was to create a 10-minute vignette from a fictive woman’s life, each segment advancing a decade or so forward, deploying a single continuous shot where possible.

The result is neither straightforward narrative nor polemical abstract, but instead an aesthetically pleasing meditation on womanhood and vanishing traditions — in places where those things have been under siege from various forms of colonialism for hundreds of years. Though offshore commercial prospects will be limited (Vendetta Films is releasing in New Zealand and Australia), this is a natural choice for festival and educational programmers seeking input from cinematically underrepresented communities.

“Vai” doesn’t really pretend to be the story of a single character — in fact,...

“Yellow Rose,” written, directed, and produced by Diane Paragas, was awarded the Grand Jury Award for outstanding North American narrative feature at the 35th Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival, which ran May 2-10.

Special Jury Awards for cinematography, actress and breakthrough performance went, respectively, to Ante Cheng for “Ms. Purple”; Maya Erskine for “Plus One”; and Eva Noblezada for “Yellow Rose.”

“Seadrift,” directed by Tim Tsai, took home the Grand Jury Award for North American documentary feature, while the jury-panelists gave Special Jury Awards to “Jaddoland,” directed by Nadia Shihab, and “Origin Story,” directed by Kulap Vilaysack.

The Grand Jury Award for international narrative feature went to “House of Hummingbird,” directed by Bora Kim. Jury Awards went to Leon Le for “Song Lang,” and to the directors ensemble of “Vai”: ‘Ofa-Ki-Levuka Guttenbeil-Likiliki, Amberley Jo Aumua, Becs Arahanga, Dianna Fuemana, Marina Alofagia McCartney, Matasila Freshwater, Mīria George, Nicole Whippy.

Exclusive: Here’s a nice first trailer for female empowerment pic Vai, which opens the Berlin Film Festival’s NATIVe strand next week before playing at SXSW.

The portmanteau film, written and directed by nine Pacific female filmmakers and filmed on seven Pacific islands follows the journey of empowerment through culture over the lifetime of one woman, Vai. The film is produced by Kerry Warkia and Kiel McNaughton, whose well-received drama Waru played at Toronto and Palm Springs.

Vai, which means water in Maori, was shot in Fiji, Tonga, Solomon Islands, Kuki Airani (Cook Islands), Samoa, Niue and Aotearoa (New Zealand). The character is played by a different indigenous actress in each of the Pacific countries.

Filmmakers are Ofa-Ki-Levuka Guttenbeil-Likiliki, Matasila Freshwater, Amberley Jo Aumua, Mīria George, Marina Alofagia McCartney, Dianna Fuemana, Becs Arahanga and Sharon Whippy (writer) and Nicole Whippy (writer-director).

The film was made with investment from Brown Sugar Apple Grunt Productions,...

‘Vai’ (Photo credit: Nzfc)

Ten New Zealand features and shorts including a record number by female directors will screen in official selection at the Berlin International Film Festival next month while two will feature at the SXSW Festival in Austin, Texas in March.

Written and directed by nine Pacific women and filmed in seven different Pacific countries, Vai will open the Berlinale’s NATIVe section and will then have its North American premiere at SXSW.

Produced by Waru’s Kerry Warkia and Kiel McNaughton, Vai chronicles the journey of empowerment through culture over the lifetime of one woman, Vai, played by a different Indigenous actress in each of the Pacific countries.

The writer/directors are ‘Ofa-Ki-Levuka Guttenbeil-Likiliki, Matasila Freshwater, Amberley Jo Aumua, Mīria George, Marina Alofagia McCartney, Dianna Fuemana, Becs Arahanga, Nicole Whippy and Sharon Whippy.

Mpi Media is handling international sales and Vendetta Films will distribute in Australia and New Zealand.