The third New Zealand Film Festival will come to Beijing on July 7 with 12 films, including "River Queen" that won the Best Music award of "Golden Goblet" in Shanghai Sunday.

The 12 films include five features, such as "The World's Fastest Indian" which is about an old New Zealand motorcycle racing driver who sets the land-speed world record, and "In My Father's Den" that tells a story of a battle weary war photographer and his 16-year-old daughter.

"River Queen," directed by Vincent Ward and starring Samantha Morton, is an intimate story set during the 1860s, in which a young Irish woman Sarah and her family find themselves on both sides of the turbulent wars between British and Maori during the British colonization of this island country.

The movie captured the Best Music award at the 9th Shanghai International Film Festival Sunday evening, according to the organizers.

There are also a documentary on New Zealand film, "Cinema of Unease," and six short films, including "Two Cars, One Night" that describes a tale of first love, and "Closer" which tells about a deaf boy.

The festival, organized by the Chinese State Administration of Radio, Film and Television (SARFT) and New Zealand Film Commission, is held in the wake of four successful Chinese Film Festivals in New Zealand since 1998.

Following its debut in Shanghai, this film festival is now underway in Guangzhou, capital of south China's Guangdong Province, and will last four days in Beijing.

"I hope the New Zealand Film Festival will further develop our relationship, providing Chinese audiences with an insight into the diversity and vitality of New Zealand culture and film-making," New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark said in her congratulatory letter.
 
(Xinhua News Agency June 27, 2006)