Australian filmmakers and stars had flourished throughout the late 1970s and ’80s, but for neighboring New Zealand, it took Jane Campion to put the cinema of her native land on the map with 1993’s The Piano. Part Victorian gothic romance, part feminist parable, and thoroughly otherworldly and dreamlike, the movie made Campion a director to be reckoned with. Having swept Cannes – The Piano tied with Chen Kaige’s lush Chinese historical epic Farewell My Concubine for the Palme d’Or and earned Holly Hunter a Best Actress prize for her mute heroine Ada – the film went on to become an international hit.
Hunter went on to win every Best Actress prize under the sun, including at the Oscars, where the movie also won Best Supporting Actress for 11-year-old newcomer Anna Paquin and Best Screenplay for Campion. She became only the second woman ever nominated for the Academy Award for Best Director and remains the only woman ever to have directed a Palme d’Or winner. She opened the door for New Zealand filmmakers (a doorway soon burst wide open by Peter Jackson) and made a star of Paquin (who, as a grown-up, has gone on to projects as varied as the X-Men franchise and HBO’s True Blood). Campion’s later films have had a hard time living up to the precedent set by The Piano, though she’s won acclaim again this year for the Sundance Channel mini-series Top of the Lake.
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