Lights Camera Action

With the current international focus on the percentage of women directors in the film industry, Fleur Mealing looks at how New Zealand is faring and talks to three of our female film-makers who are already successfully paving the way.

- Fleur Mealing

Jackie van Beek

Ten years ago actress Jackie van Beek was teaching clown camp in Alice Springs, Australia, when she was given the chance to direct her first short film. What resulted was a sweet film about two indigenous boys, Jesse and Rodney, and their true struggle of trying to find a pair of shoes so that they would be able to attend school.

Since then, Jackie, now 41, has become a regular on our screens, starring in TV shows such as 800 Words and the Kiwi hit film What We Do in the Shadows. But it may be her latest movie, The Breaker Upperers, that seals her as one of our leading lights.

Expectations were high for the film – which she cowrote, co-directed and co-starred in with actor Madeleine Sami – after a US critic said it “might even be funnier” than executive producer Taika Waititi’s Hunt for the Wilderpeople. Currently the 15th top grossing New Zealand film of all time, The Breaker Upperers is centred around two nihilistic best friends and roommates who, soured by love, decide to set up a business carrying out others’ relationship break-ups. It’s intensely funny, but what gives this movie its heart is that it is a film about women, made by women.

“Part of the responsibility of being a director on The Breaker Upperers, we felt, was to give other women a chance,” says Jackie. “We collected a really great creative team, people that were really experienced; people that we knew would respect our vision and not freak out at what we were trying to do.”