VIGIL
- Year
- 1984
- Reference
- F1056
- Media type
- Moving image
“In a remote valley a farmer dies. In his wake comes a hunter. The farmer's daughter watches him. He starts a relationship with her mother and helps her grandfather to build a strange new invention.
“To the child he is a predator. She must expel him from her valley
“VIGIL is the first ever film from New Zealand to compete in Cannes (1984). Winner of the Best Film award at the Madrid Film Festival it is the first feature film of 30 year-old Vincent Ward. Vigil is a powerful atmospheric drama set in a primeval valley where four characters live and farm in an uneasy coexistence. The story unfolds through the eyes of the central character Toss, an 11 year-old girl caught up in the tragedy of her father’s death and the arrival of a stranger, Ethan. Ward spent five years making this mystical testimony to the beauty and immutability of nature's laws and the circle of life and death.
“Festival/Awards: In Competition, Cannes; Madrid, Best Film.” - New Zealand Film Commission; www.nzfilm.co.nz/film/vigil; 30/01/2014.