Passenger is a New Zealand-based production company established in 2007 by producers Felicity Letcher and Rachel Lorimer to make urban, contemporary, and entertaining films and theatre productions.
Passenger’s first project was the internationally acclaimed short film This Is Her, written by Kate McDermott, directed by Katie Wolfe, and was funded by the New Zealand Film Commission Short Film Fund. A wickedly black comedy about the bitter aftertaste of love, This Is Her premiered at the Edinburgh Film Festival in 2008, before screening at several international festivals, including The 35th Telluride Film Festival, the 46th New York Film Festival, the Prague International Short Film Festival (Winner: Audience Award), the St Tropez Antipodes Film Festival (Winner: Best Short Film). In January, This Is Her will screen at the 25th Sundance Film Festival, and at Flickerfest 2009.
Passenger’s production schedule for 2009 includes Katie Wolfe’s second short film, Hitched, written by Branwen Millar, and the world premiere season of Station to Station, a new play by Michael Galvin, directed by Jonathan Hendry.
Hitched is a natural follow-up to This Is Her’s deliciously pessimistic take on relationships, a gripping and original dissection of marriage. A couple’s road trip takes a dangerous turn, when a flirtatious game becomes a compulsive contest of sex and power. Hitched is funded by the NZFC Short Film Fund, and will be filmed in the second half of 2009.
Station to Station is a blackly funny play that takes an intelligent and moving look at our desire for certainty in an ultimately unknowable world. A young Maori solder working for a security firm in Iraq returns home to his sick mother, and is recruited by a television evangelist who (with his attractive female partner) is planning a major terrorist act in order to hasten the second coming. Station to Station is funded by Creative New Zealand and will premiere in July 2009 as part of the 2009 Winter STAMP Programme at The Edge.