Vincent Ward once described as the Antipodean Werner Herzog made his feature debut with Vigil, heralding his status as one of New Zealand s most distinctive filmmaking talents and paving the way for such equally remarkable and unclassifiable efforts as The Navigator: A Medieval Odyssey and Map of the Human Heart.

A stranger appears in a remote New Zealand farmland at the exact time a farmer accidentally falls to his death. The mysterious outsider grows close to some of the dead man s family, to the point where he and the widow become lovers. But her eleven-year-old daughter, Toss, struggling to come to terms with the death of her father as well as her impending womanhood, believes the intruder to be the devil and sets about protecting her family and their homestead.

Propelled by Fiona Kay s outstanding performance by as Toss, she would earn a standing ovation when Vigil screened at the 1984 Cannes Film Festival the first time ever that a New Zealand feature played in the main competition.

***

Vincent Ward directed and co-wrote this stately coming-of-age film that features a subtly nuanced performance from twelve-year-old Fiona Kay. Toss (Kay) is a sweet girl on the verge of adolescence, who lives on a sheep farm with her father in the rolling hills of New Zealand. When her father dies in a tragic accident, Toss' mother Elizabeth (Penelope Stewart) puts the farm up for sale. But her grandfather (Bill Kerr) wants to keep the farm in business and enlists the hunter Ethan (Frank Whitten) to help get the farm back into functioning shape. At first Ethan and Elizabeth react to each other's presence with restrained hostility, but their nearness to each other eventually erupts into a passionate love affair. Through all of this, Toss tries to deal with the up-front passions of the two adults as she also adjusts to her coming womanhood.

Excerpt from B+N located HERE

1080P Dual-layered Blu-ray MPEG-4 AVC Video

Edition Details:
• Brand-new appreciation by film critic Nick Roddick, recorded exclusively for this release (13:19)
• On-set report from the long-running New Zealand television programme Country Calendar (14:17)
• Extract from a 1987 Kaleidoscope television documentary on New Zealand cinema, focusing on Vigil and Vincent Ward (07:28)
• Theatrical trailer (02:13)
• Reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by the Twins of Evil
• FIRST PRESSING ONLY: Illustrated collector’s booklet featuring new writing on the film by critic Carmen Gray

Blu-ray  Release Date: July 10th, 2018
Standard Blu-ray case