Magik and Rose

Magik (Alison Bruce), a wandering fortune teller, parks her house truck in Hokitika on a mission to find the daughter she gave up for adoption. One of her first clients, a married chemist's assistant (Nicola Murphy), is seeking a solution to infertility. Magik, too, wants another child — but not a partner. In writer/director Vanessa Alexander’s first feature, the pair embark on a joint odyssey for love and pregnancy. The film also features Oliver Driver and scenes shot at Hokitika's Wildfoods Festival. Variety critic David Stratton praised the casting and "disarmingly sweet treatment". Read more about Magik and Rose here.

...one of the more beguiling local efforts to make it into cinemas in recent times . . . Alexander, who also wrote, has a sense of character and plot which would befit a veteran. Better still, she juggles the pathos and comedy of the storyline — which traverses the highly charged subjects of infertility and adoption — without lapsing into the mawkish on the one hand or the farcical and banal on the other.

– Peter Calder, in a three-star review when the film played at the NZ Film Festival, July 2000

Key Cast & Crew

Oliver Driver

As: Jackson

Nicola Murphy

As: Rose

Fred Renata

Cinematographer

Vanessa Alexander

Director, Writer

Alison Bruce

As: Magik

Larry Parr

Producer