What We Do in the Shadows

All right, next match-up.

We have New Zealand with What We Do in the Shadows.

I still can't believe that Dead Alive got taken out by What We Do in the Shadows.

But anyway...

It's gone up against India with the movie Toombad.

Look.

Yeah.

I'm just going to put What We Do in the Shadows.

Thank you both.

First then, Taika Waititi is an actor, writer and director from New Zealand whose unique comedic sensibility and aesthetic can be seen in the films What We Do in the Shadows, Thor Ragnarok and Jojo Rabbit, which earned him an Oscar for his screenplay.

His latest film is Clara and the Son, a kooky AI fable starring Jenna Ortega as Clara, an AF, an artificial friend, bought by a troubled family to help their lonely 14-year-old daughter.

Clara and the Son is an adaptation of Nobel laureate Kazuo Ishiguro's novel of the same name.

She's like, I actually liken her to Giulietta Messina, Fellini's wife, Knights of Cabiria and La Strada.

La Strada.

When you see her in those films, it's just heartbreaking.

She's so expressive and she's just so pure.

And I did like the last one that came out a couple years ago.

Number five, What We Do in the Shadows, 2014.

Jemaine Clement and Taiki Waititi's sharp, witty mockumentary following a group of eccentric vampire housemates in modern New Zealand.

I haven't seen it, but after Taika Waititi did Thor Love and Thunder, I don't know if I have the stomach to watch any of his movies.

So that was sort of the kernel.

We also thought it was funny, you know, when we came upon the vampire specific of, you know, those movies where they always are like, turn me so we can be together forever.

Like in Twilight, there's that scene.

But then the reality of, you know, you don't see what the cut to 500 years later.

Anne Carson is their second laureate in a row.

But first, Taika Waititi has come a long way from his breakout film mockumentary about vampires, What We Do in the Shadows.

He won an Oscar for his screenplay for his comedy drama about a boy in the Hitler Youth, Jojo Rabbit.

All his films, however dark the subject matter, are characterised by a laconic New Zealand sense of humour.