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 is currently on its international festival run, having just screened at ten Oscar®-qualifying festivals including Melbourne International Film Festival’s prestigious Accelerator Programme. Pack Rat has already 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

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. In this position I found danger and freedom, loneliness and love. 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, I hope Pack Rat speaks to a broad audience by exploring the universal dynamics of gender, power, belonging and the growing pains of self-acceptance.

FESTIVAL SELECTIONS

AWARDS + NOMINATIONS
Australian Cinematographers Society Awards - Gold - Winner
New Zealand Cinematographers Society Awards - Bronze - Winner
Show Me Shorts Film Festival - Best Screenplay - Winner
Thomas Edison Film Festival - Jury's Choice Award, 1st prize - Winner
RiverRun International Film Festival - Rising Star Award - Winner
RiverRun International Film Festival - Best Narrative Short - Nominee

NORTH AMERICA
Atlanta Film Festival
Dallas International Film Festival
deadCenter Film Festival
RiverRun International Film Festival
San Jose International Short Film Festival
Thomas Edison Film Festival
Newport Beach Film Festival
The Future of Film is Female
Mini Movie Marathon

SOUTH AMERICA
Festival Curta Cinema - Rio de Janeiro International Short Film Festival

EUROPE
Odense International Film Festival
Hof International Film Festival
Cambridge Film Festival
Down Under Film Festival

OCEANIA
Melbourne International Film Festival - Accelerator Program
Show Me Shorts Film Festival

TEAM
In Association with THE NEW ZEALAND FILM COMMISSION
Producer JOHNNY LYON
Casting Director STU TURNER, CATCH CASTING
Cinematographer RYAN ALEXANDER LLOYD
Production Designer GLENN BLOMFIELD
PARK ROAD POST PRODUCTION
Sound Effects Editor + Re-Recording Mixer ALEXIS FEODOROFF
Dialogue Editor + Re-Recording Mixer TIM CHAPRONIERE
Colorist MATTHEW WEAR

CAST
Baby Teeth DEEDEE COMET
Louie CALEB CAMERON-LEE
Holden NICO MOY
Chops MAKEA UPU
Dyl MATTY ROCKEL
Curt BEN OLLIVER
Nat GEMA WHITFORD-JOYNT
Missa EMILY PATTERSON