Richard Lord

January 1945: on a lonely farm in coastal New Zealand, a young widow confronts two crewmen from a German submarine who have come ashore on a secret mission - to get fresh milk.

The timeless story of an ill-fated romance between a young Greek village girl and a conflicted Turkish officer during the dawn of the Greek War for Independence against the Ottoman Empire in 1821.

18-year-old Elliot lives and works on a small family-owned New Zealand dairy farm. He meanders out at dawn towards a herd of feeding cows where his attempt to take the wheel for the morning’s feed-out run is quickly overruled by his overbearing father. Elliot’s resentment grows with his increasingly apparent lack of autonomy and respect on the farm. A routine grocery trip sees Elliot bump into Laura, an enigmatic checkout operator and love interest, who pockets Elliot a pouch of tobacco on the sly, directing him to collect her later on that afternoon.

2010 on the Canterbury Plains and all is well. Lambs, blue skies and daffodils. In Cathedral Square choir boys sing to their God. Punts push new season's tourists along the Avon. They photograph the 'Garden city'; the 'most English city outside of England'. We get hit with a 7.1 earthquake. We stand up, wave our fists at the heavens and compliment ourselves on our ability to recover. And then we get hit even harder. Now the city has fallen. Many are dead. Many injured. Many narrowly escape. A fragile people reappear in the following days. We have learnt from the first earthquake and once again a response is growing. Once again adrenaline is taking over. Now the whole country is rallying for Christchurch. It's the energy of the people that's unprecedented. Communities are rising from the sand. People are holding tight to each other. A year later and the quakes keep rolling. Now the Canterbury earthquakes are the most ever quakes recorded in a series. And we're still counting....