Director Robert Sarkies will be a guest of the festival and will be introducing the first screening of Out of the Blue

The peaceful innocence of a tiny seaside village is shattered by the actions of one man in what was to become New Zealand's largest mass murder.

This edge-of-the-seat drama of courage and heroism captures the minutiae of the true events of 1990 at Aramoana when a reclusive gun collector shot and killed 13 people without explanation. Steering well clear of action flick benchmarks, filmmaker Robert Sarkies (Scarfies) thoughtfully elucidates on the rhythms of this gentle settlement and how, apparently in the blink of an eye, that idyll could be obliterated.

“Chilling, often moving docudrama focuses not so much on the mayhem or murderer, but on the bewildered, occasionally courageous reactions of ordinary citizens caught in the inexplicable violence.” - Variety