New Zealand Has Some Filmtastic Backdrops

Many of the grander surroundings in Craig Zobel’s new film Z For Zachariah were filmed in New Zealand. Women’s lifestyle site Bustle takes a look back at other notable films shot throughout the country in which location played a central role.

“The New Zealand Screen Production Grant provides filmmakers with significant financial incentive to film in the country – as if its grandeur alone weren’t enough,” Katherine Cusumano writes.

“New Zealand-conceived and -executed western, Slow West stars Michael Fassbender, Kodi Smitt-McPhee, and Caren Pistorius. ‘The environment is controlling everything and everyone is a victim of the environment,’ Pistorius told New Zealand-based news outlet Stuff. The film premiered in May.

“New Zealanders and foreigners alike are turning to the country’s wilderness to demonstrate an otherworldly quality in their films, or to show how one’s surroundings dictate behaviours. Both are the case in Z For Zachariah, where the landscape forces three people together and provides a backdrop for a post-apocalyptic oasis within a wasteland. Though the film itself takes place in a radioactive West Virginia, it’s not a West Virginia that would be recognisable to contemporary eyes – so the addition of New Zealand seems a pretty good idea.”

Other films mentioned include Peter Jackson’s Tolkien trilogies, Bridge To Terabithia, which was mainly shot in Auckland, The Lion, The Witch, And The Wardrobe and James Cameron’s Avatar.

Original article by Katherine Cusumano, Bustle, August 28, 2015.

Photo by AP.