A Killing

Twotors just understand cinema. A tale is a fictitious or true narrative or story, especially one that is imaginatively recounted, and these masters of their craft constructed a beautiful folklorian myth that paid homage to the brothers Grimm and crawled under the skin by the end credits.

Kicking off with a scene eerily reminiscent of 2015 runner up TIDE by Tom Sainsbury et all, the film quickly plays on memory and the reliability of narration, but in a playful way.

The team went big, expanding on previous domestic settings to show that they are even more capable in nature; shooting ocean views and forests with aplomb with great control of their anamorphic frame throughout.

The colour by the way is absolutely incredible here, the rippling effect of the opening waves presented in a hue that immediately calls to mind the opening of old cinema curtains when films still projected off prints in a booth. An impressive meta detail if ever I saw one.

I spent a heck of a lot of time growing up on the West Coast of New Zealand, visting my Grandma in Hokitika and Okarito dozens of times and so I loved the very on the money kiwi flavour of mixing the gold rush which hit so close to home, with strong metaphors of wary travelers and sirens.

I felt that by design you let the focus of the film be dialogue which was rich and engrossing. I'm often not the biggest fan of slowburn and often am wary of films in this competition with a good amount of sitting and talking, but knowing the quality of your previous work I was paying close attention. How you let your films breathe with home truths that raise big questions like settling down compared to following your inner adventurous spirit is the true sign of auteurs at work.

The performances were measured and confident. The sound design meticulous throughout.

Finally the ending was one of the more chilling I've seen in a while and fell right into the bastion of the cinema of unease this country is famous for. The mixup to surreal desolation and despair was absolutely beautiful and elevanted the film completely for mine with the left field visuals perfectly suiting the result.

Great job Twotors!

A hugely impressive outing from Twotors who have figured out how to make something deliciously cinematic in a team of just two people. Astounding. You make cinematic art better than much larger teams and I know this is a huge credit to your technical craft.

The opening shot was absolutely gripping and I was pulled into the world wanting to understand more. This team have continued to go from strength to strength and this film deservedly earned recognition from the judges, but not enough to make its way to the finals unfortunately.

Its incredibly tough to make successful drama in 48Hours, last year's Front Yard had a much stronger sense of identity and perspective. This film was boldly pieced together but, while wildly impressive as a feat, lacked that same unique sense of voice and originality that has carried this team to success in the past. While I was gripped by the beginning and end of this film, I felt like there was something missing to carry us through the middle of the film - we had our answers of what was happening and what was going to happen much too quickly and we almost needed another layer to the relationship between these two characters to keep us invested.

Amazing work Twotors. So, so impressed by you every year.