Moa-nominated for Best Documentary, this full-length title chronicles two decades of political football between New Zealanders hoping to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and followers of the business as usual approach. Co-directing with his longtime editor Abi King-Jones, Alister Barry (The Hollow Men) continues his patented approach of melding new interviews with raids on the news archives. Critic Graeme Tuckett argued that the film makes “a compelling case that although the science was settled by 1990, we’ve allowed politics and corporations to mute our response to a very real crisis”.

Mojo Mathers was New Zealand's first deaf MP, and faced considerable hurdles just doing her job. In this short documentary from the Loading Docs series, Mathers talks about her time as an MP and her desire to ensure deaf and disabled people can fully engage in democracy in Aotearoa. In 2017 Mathers drafted the Election Access Fund Bill, to provide a contestable fund for those with disabilities who wanted to run for Parliament. In May 2018, Mathers' Bill passed its first reading with unanimous support. Director Jason Boberg has direct experience of disability. 

This 1976 documentary examines India’s third Prime Minister, Indira Gandhi. Her father took office as Prime Minister in 1947, the day India became independent from Britain. Framed around an extended interview with Gandhi, reporter Dairne Shanahan explores India and Indira’s history, and her controversial ‘emergency’ governing of the democracy’s 600 million people. The documentary was directed by Barry Barclay. As this article explains, Shanahan hoped it would be the pilot for a series, but it was never made. In October 1984 Gandhi was assassinated by two of her bodyguards.

Before he was a British MP and Pavlova Paradise author, politics lecturer Austin Mitchell was a well known NZBC broadcaster. In this September 1965 first episode of his parliamentarian interview series he chats to Prime Minister Keith Holyoake. Mid-way through his 12 year reign, ‘Kiwi Keith’ offers frank insight into his job, from how he chooses his caucus to the balance of power between the arms of government. The National Party leader frames the role of PM as, “Chairman of Directors of the Board that runs the biggest business in New Zealand, the Government.”

In the third episode of The Big Art Trip the little green car heads first to Piha, where hosts Nick Ward and Douglas Lloyd-Jenkins interview hip-hop artist King Kapisi. After that they visit jewellery and multimedia artist Lisa Reihana at her K Road apartment, discuss contemporary furniture with designer Kim Martinengo and drop in on hot glass artist Stephen Bradbourne. They also check out art in a corporate setting before meeting sculptor Emily Siddell, and finish up by visiting painter Andy Leleisi’uao at his home studio in Mangere.

The final episode of the first season of this colonial comedy tackles the Treaty, as settler Henry Vole argues that his land (purchased off a bloke he met at a bar in Tauranga) is fairly his. The pros and cons of a treaty are debated: “where all Māori may benefit from the administration that gave us the 18 hour working day for children”. Te Tutu counters with a Martin Luther King dream: “where the English are not marginalised in Aotearoa simply because they are a minority … where the English language won’t be lost because we’ll have Pākehā language nests …” 

On 1 July 2001, John Scott and his partner Greg Scrivener were killed in their home in Suva. John, from an old European-Fiji family was the Director-General of the Fiji Red Cross and worked as a go-between in the hostage crisis during the 2000 coup. The documentary traces the colourful story of the Scott family, the political crises that have marked Fiji's recent history, the killings and their aftermath, and the complex mix of tribal authority and democracy. It won best documentary and camera gongs at 2008 Qantas Film and Television Awards.

Jon Gadsby visits Myanmar (formerly Burma) and discovers an achingly beautiful country. But behind endless golden temples and scenes from Kipling, Gadsby finds "a place of contradiction" where many live in abject poverty, controlled absolutely by their military government (most famously the ongoing house arrest of democracy advocate Aung San Suu Kyi). When Gadsby visits, it is not a country to be travelled to lightly. He finds the locals to be open and willing to play host; yet he is struck overall by their "sad beauty".

In 1996 Tony Sutorius got his hands on a new digital video camera, days before the start of an election campaign in Wellington Central. Made on the proverbial shoestring, this feature-length documentary chronicles five of those battling for the crown as a new political age  — MMP — dawns. Richard Prebble joins a new party called Act, the National candidate joins United New Zealand… and one of the five will be sacrificed by their own party. Sutorius sat through 55 hours of footage to forge the result, which won enthused, sellout audiences at the 1999 NZ Film Festival.

The tagline runs: "The story of unemployment in New Zealand" and In A Land of Plenty is an exploration of just that; it takes as its starting point the consensus from The Depression onwards that Godzone economic policy should focus on achieving full employment, and explores how this was radically shifted by the 1984 Labour government. Director Alister Barry's perspective is clear, as he trains a humanist lens on ‘Rogernomics' to argue for the policy's negative effects on society, "as a new poverty-stricken underclass developed".