Boy

Boy (2010) — watch online on iFILM: a New Zealand comedy-drama written and directed by Taika Waititi. It's 1984, and eleven-year-old Alamein — known to everyone as Boy — lives on the rural East Coast with his grandmother, a goat, and his younger brother Rocky, who is quietly convinced he has magical powers.

Boy's hero is Michael Jackson. His absent father, in the stories he tells friends, is something between a warrior and a legend. When the real man shows up — played by Waititi himself — he turns out to be a bumbling small-time crook who buried a bag of money nearby and wants it back. Boy watches his myth deflate in real time. The film handles this without cruelty, finding the comedy and the ache in the same moment.

Winner of the top prize at the Rotterdam International Film Festival. Stream Boy (2010) online on iFILM.