Paradise Palace -- Feature Film

"I am the least difficult of men 

All I want is boundless love"

                                                                     - Frank O'Hara

"Looking 'round the room

I can tell that you 

Are the most beautiful girl in the... room

(In the whole wide room)"

                                                                     - Jemaine Clement

OUR PROJECT

Eli and Claire, two student neighbours in a Wellington apartment building, fall in and out of each other's lives over the summer of 2019, in this exploration of sex and relationships in the digital age.

Paradise Palace is a 90-minute micro-budget independent film created by an ambitious team of Victoria and Massey University film graduates in Wellington, New Zealand, who have all cut their teeth on short films and are now taking the mad plunge into something much bigger.

Inspired by indie film legends like Sean Baker, Richard Linklater, and Wong Kar-Wai, Paradise Palace is an authentic glimpse into student life in Wellington, examining the experiences of young people in the not-so-big city.

Director / Co-Writer / Producer: Thomas Stewardson
Director of Photography / Co-Writer / Producer: Rona Aitken
Producer: Sophie Hampson
Producer: Jack Harriss
Producer: Max Helbick
Producer: Piper Kilmister
Producer: Max Norwood
Producer: Ben Wagstaff
Intimacy Coordinator: Ace Dalziel
Costume Designer: Ruby Carter

Our incredible cast includes:

Simoun Monte Angeles as Eli

Sarah Penny as Claire

Ai Innes-Mills as Grace

Sarah Lawrence as Polly

Tom Foy as David

Louie McMillan-Grant as Douglas

And Jackson Burling as Bede

WHAT ARE WE FUNDRAISING FOR?

Pre-production for Paradise Palace has so far been entirely self-funded, and your support will help us shoot the film -- going towards catering for our cast and crew, location costs, and costume / set dress.

This is an all or nothing campaign -- so every dollar counts! Every donation, big or small, will help us complete our April/May production.

WHY ARE WE DOING THIS?

We are young filmmakers hungry to tell bigger stories. We want to capture a feeling, a mood, an experience, tell a story that's true yet unique, specific yet universal, and mundane yet special.

Paradise Palace is about loneliness, connection, and being true to yourself. It's about endless summer days and blue neon nights. It's about wind in your face, it's about hot apartments with bad air-conditioning, it's about slow shifts in bad jobs and woozy mornings after boozy nights. It's about longing, and excitement, and terror!

You've seen the films from every other generation, but you've never really seen ours.