Following its premiere on Saturday as part of the NZIFF’s Autumn Events, the year’s first local title to play local screens has been getting good press.
The Ground We Won
Cinema Aotearoa and Keeping Up With NZ were first out of the blocks and found plenty of good things to say. For those not at the Civic on Saturday night for the premiere, expect to hear plenty more positive words spoken as the film rolls through its remaining Autumn Event outings and on to wider release from 7 May.
“It’s like being granted a fly-on-the-wall view into a secret society…” said Cinema Aotearoa’s reviewer, “and it’s magical.”
Offering dairy farming, rural rugby and even fewer female roles than the average Western, Chirstopher Pryor and Miriam Smith’s follow up to How Far Is Heaven is a celebration of many things not remotely PC.
For Keeping Up With NZ, Ingrid Grenar called the film an “honest and unsanitised telling of a very male Kiwi institution, with characters you’ll feel great affection for by the closing credits”.
The Ground We Won’s young gun Peanut
Grenar found plenty to enjoy in “the antics of rural Reporoa’s rugby team, and the men that live for that Saturday game”, concluding, “The Ground We Won gives you a great big Kiwi man hug.”
Cinema Aotearoa concluded, “It’s easy to see The Ground We Won travelling well both within our borders and beyond. There’s an impressive duality to the film, a piece of work that so perfectly captures New Zealand but also remains startlingly universal.”
The Ground We Won plays Autumn Event screenings on 2 May at Wellington’s Embassy Theatre and 3 May at Christchurch’s Hoyts Riccarton. It goes on wider release from 7 May.
