Costa Botes

Costa Botes has been an independent filmmaker in New Zealand since the early 1980s His short film Stalins Sickle won the jury prize at the ClermontFerrand Short Film Festival in 1988 Forgotten Silver a mockdocumentary cowritten codirected with Peter Jackson in 1995 created a national sensation in 1995 It won a special critics prize at the Venice Film Festival and has become a cult favourite worldwide Costas first feature film Saving Grace 1997 was selected for competition at Valladolid AsiaPacific and Fantasporto Film Festivals He documented the making of Peter Jacksons epic trilogy Lord of the Rings trilogy from 1999 to 2003 with a matching trio of feature length documentaries These were released in a limited edition DVD box set in 2006 and later included in the definitive bluray collection released in 2011 Costa established his own production company Lone Pine Film TV Productions in 2005 to make independent documentaries These have included Struggle No More 2006 a biography of NZs greatest unknown band and Yes Thats Me 2008 about a blues musician with manic depression He photographed produced and edited the documentary Lost In Wonderland in 2009 mentoring its young director Zoe McIntosh This premiered at the NZ Film Festival and won awards for photography and best documentary the following year at the Qantas NZ Film TV Awards Costa wrote and produced another film for Zoe a 35mm short called Day Trip 2010 This was selected to screen at numerous international festivals including Tribeca Clermont Ferrand and Hawaii It won the Signis Award at Espression En Corto in Mexico and best short film at the Montreal First Peoples Film Festival Costas next documentary feature Candyman The David Klein Story 2010 was about the eccentric American candy genius who invented Jelly Belly jellybeans It premiered at Slamdance and Hot Docs in 2010 and won the Directors Choice best documentary award at the Rincon Puerto Rico Film Festival He followed this with two documentary features Daytime Tiger 2011 a film about mania and The Last Dogs of Winter 2012 about a man fighting to preserve rare Inuit sled dogs from extinction The Last Dogs of Winter had its world premiere as an official selection at the Toronto International Film Festival Act of Kindness 2015 a documentary about a young New Zealanders experiences in postGenocide Rwanda won the Best Editing award at the Melbourne Documentary Film Festival Costa also wrote and executive produced another short dramatic film for director Zoe McIntosh The World in Your Window 2017 has screened at many top international festivals and won awards at ClermontFerrand Tokyo Melbourne FlickerFest Vancouver Prague and Tahiti His most recent work Angie 2018 premiered at the NZ International Film Festival It was described by one critic as a deep dark daring wonder Another critic wrote Costa Botes has been making films for over 30 years ANGIE is his best yet He has always had a deft hand when it comes to emotional material He has the ability to melt into the beautifully framed background and let the subjects speak his flawless editing weaving a narrative spell