PACK RAT

In rural New Zealand, a fifteen-year-old girl fights to keep her place among the pack of boys she has grown up with. As day turns to night, she falls into a power game with the pack's alpha - but it is the wrestle within herself that proves to be her hardest challenge.

Pack Rat was awarded the New Zealand Film Commission’s highly competitive He Kauahi Catalyst grant. The film screened at 22 festivals including Melbourne International Film Festival’s prestigious Accelerator Programme. Pack Rat received recognition for its directing, writing, cinematography and acting; winning the 1st Prize Jury’s Choice Award at the Oscar®-qualifying Thomas Edison Film Festival, Best Screenplay at the Oscar®-qualifying Show Me Shorts Film Festival, Gold at the Australian Cinematographers Society Awards, Bronze at the New Zealand Cinematographers Society Awards and the Rising Star Award at the Oscar®-qualifying RiverRun International Film Festival.

Role: writer, director, editor

Short Film | Narrative | Drama | 18 minutes | 1.85:1

DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT

Pack Rat is a deeply intimate film inspired by my adolescence growing up in the rural Far North of Aotearoa New Zealand. Like the protagonist, I was very close to a group of boys yet I was also kept slightly on the outside of their pack. From this position I found loneliness and love, pressure and freedom. Pack Rat is a nostalgic and cathartic love/hate letter to this time in my life — a beautifully messy, awkward, insecure age of discovery and negotiation. While told through a coming-of-age narrative, finding the clarity and courage to choose yourself can be a challenge at any age. I hope Pack Rat speaks to a broad audience by exploring these universal dynamics of power, belonging, and the growing pains of self-acceptance.