Kieran Charnock

When a vulnerable young man returns home, he's confronted by a history of violence with his father, and the searing memory of a lost friend; he takes dramatic action.

In a cold and remote landscape, two strangers struggle to repair their broken pasts. A young man is on parole after serving time for attempting to murder the man who killed his girlfriend in a hit and run. A woman is released from a psychiatric facility far from her homeland. These two damaged strangers cross paths in the mountains in winter and fall into a complex intimate relationship, putting to the test their capacity to trust and heal.

"I chose to tell this story from the point of view of the Neighbour, not only because I find his perspective interesting when it comes to this issue, but also because the issue of domestic violence is so heavy and everyone has their own connotations towards it, which is why this film, for me, is not about domestic violence, but rather the influence of it. This allows me to explore a whole range of emotions and feelings, and be able to show them with greater depth by taking us away from the direct environment in which this abuse takes place, and put us somewhere close enough to still reach out to it.

Liam is nineteen, fresh out of high school, and enjoying a life of parties and pills. He lives with his grandmother. He keeps her at an arm’s length, and so, when she has a sudden stroke, he ignores her call, and doesn’t find out until he reads a text message sent from Wellington Hospital. He rushes to the hospital, in the middle of the night, drunk and hopped up on cheap stimulants. He is greeted by a closed door, and a nurse who tells him he has to wait to see his grandma. Thus, Liam spends a night and a morning in the hospital, contemplating his decisions, while befriending a young boy who is waiting for news of his mother. A social-realist drama, Boxes is a story about regret, relationships, and the widespread existence of small tragedies.

When a sickly-thin man with a thick wrap of bandages over his face arrives home, Alex is terrified and can identify him only as a stranger. His father, Bradley, is ashamed of his injuries; remembering what a 'hero' he used to be to his son. He tries to reconnect with Alex but cannot get close without scaring him. It is only after Alex grows suspicious of the masked Stranger’s somewhat familiar behaviour and eventually catches a glimpse of his eyes through a gap in the bandages that he can recognise his father immediately; the wounds disappear and it becomes clear that there is a bond that runs far deeper than that which lies on the surface.

When a sickly-thin man with a thick wrap of bandages over his face arrives home, Alex is terrified and can identify him only as a stranger. His father, Bradley, is ashamed of his injuries; remembering what a 'hero' he used to be to his son. He tries to reconnect with Alex but cannot get close without scaring him. It is only after Alex grows suspicious of the masked Stranger’s somewhat familiar behaviour and eventually catches a glimpse of his eyes through a gap in the bandages that he can recognise his father immediately; the wounds disappear and it becomes clear that there is a bond that runs far deeper than that which lies on the surface.

First-year acting student Stanley mines his girlfriend's family scandal as material for the end-of-year show at drama school. The result is a moral minefield.

A mother tries to end her teenage son’s relationship with an older woman at the risk of losing him altogether.