Paloma Schneideman’s Sundance-premiered Big Girls Don’t Cry will kick off this year’s NZIFF on 29 July in Auckland.
Set in early 2000s Matakana, the coming-of-age portrait of girlhood is Schneiderman’s debut feature.
Since Sundance, it’s played festivals including SXSW, BFI: Flare London and TIFF: New Wave. The film is the first feature to come from the alumni of the inaugural A Wave in the Ocean programme, a year-long intensive filmmaking course led by two-time Oscar winning New Zealand director, Dame Jane Campion (The Piano, The Power of the Dog, Top of the Lake), with co-director Philippa Campbell (Top of the Lake). Campion and Campbell are EPs on the film, which is produced by Vicky Pope and Thomas Coppell producing.
The film follows 14-year-old Sidney ‘Sid’ Bookman (Ani Palmer) as she’s caught between childhood and adolescence, navigating burgeoning sexual curiosity, and grappling with a desperate need for acceptance and all the clumsiness of growing up. Playing out in the era of dial-up internet and reality tv, the film weaves together themes of queer adolescence, class shame and identity, at a moment when the wider world was starting to seep into small town Aotearoa.
Filmed on location in Helensville, Te Henga Bethells Beach and Mangatawhiri Ōmaha, Big Girls Don’t Cry stars first-time screen actor Ani Palmer as Sid, alongside acclaimed English-Australian actor Noah Taylor (Game of Thrones, Almost Famous) as Sid’s father Leo, and Rain Spencer (The Summer I Turned Pretty) as the captivating American visitor Freya.
Big Girls Don’t Cry will open the 2026 NZIFF in Auckland on 29 July.
