Waves

Aroview: Shot with empathy and an open heart, this fine documentary on the arrival of four Chinese high school students to New Zealand offers rare insight into the agony and ecstasy of living and learning abroad.

Dir. Li, the international students’ teacher and maternal figure, captures a number of extraordinary moments on camera that reveal the alienation and loneliness of adjusting to a foreign culture, all the while detailing the daily (sometimes, triumphant) experience of her four resilient subjects. With their wellbeing always in mind, Li’s film is particularly rewarding for its closeness, understanding, rapport.

NZ International Film Festival 2006