Starlight Hotel

Sort of a Kiwi version of PAPER MOON, this beautifully photographed film set in depression-era New Zealand is a story of improbable companionship. Robson (SMASH PALACE) is a 13-year-old living in a rural community on the picturesque South Island. Her mother is dead, and her unemployed father relocates to Wellington on the North Island, leaving Robson in the care of an aunt who fails to understand the frustration and discomfort Robson experiences at school. When the situation becomes more than she can take, Robson runs away, bound for Christchurch where she hopes to hop a boat to Wellington and her father. En route she encounters Phelps, an emotionally scarred WW I ...