By Sam Tattersfield
Two New Zealand Broadcasting School students have been invited to the prestigious Festival de Cannes to accompany their eight-minute documentary The Grind.
The short compiles stories told by men who have used the gay dating app Grindr. Co-director Kyan Krumdieck describes the app as "like tinder, except it's just gay guys and a little bit more sex-filled than your average dating app".
The invitation to Cannes wasn't the first time the film has been recognised; it won the student film award at the Show Me Shorts festival in 2015.
Naturally, the film drew some raised eyebrows for its racy content -- no stories were left out for being too lewd.
However, the filmmakers say that one of the main reasons for making the film was to open people up to a world they might not otherwise ever see, and they strived to be as representative of the community as possible.
The challenge for the Krumdieck and co-director Annabelle Dick now is getting themselves to Cannes to showcase their film, and network with the film purchasers that flock to Cannes every year.
However, as Dick states, the estimated $10,000 they'll need to make the trip will be no mean feat to raise. "As a couple of students, flying over to Europe for more than a week at a time is pretty expensive."
They've set up a Givealittle page to pay for the plane tickets, and say that Cannes is "basically a marketplace where (we) can actually get a foot in the door in the industry, the difference between going and not going would be massive".
The stories are based on the experiences of a number of gay men in Christchurch.
Sam Tattersfield was the director of photography on The Grind.
Newshub.
