VIGIL

“The earthiness of the grain (from film to images) is so essential to everything that births VIGIL, to the point where the movie starts to look like individual photographs taped together with aged Scotch tape you'd find in your grandmother’s old photo albums.” -- Alfred Markut Jr., Letterboxd

Visionary filmmaker Vincent Ward (THE NAVIGATOR: A MEDIEVAL ODYSSEY, WHAT DREAMS MAY COME) made his feature debut with VIGIL, heralding his status as one of New Zealand’s most distinctive talents and paving the way for his later, equally remarkable / unclassifiable efforts.

A stranger appears in a remote New Zealand farmland at the exact time a farmer accidentally falls to his death. The mysterious outsider grows close to the dead man’s family, to the point where he and the widow become lovers. But her eleven-year-old daughter Toss (an outstanding Fiona Kay) believes the intruder to be the devil -- setting about protecting her family and their homestead.