Review of the New Zealand cinema is a part of the multi-year project of the ERA NEW HORIZONS festival – an annual presentation of a selected national cinematography. The New Zealand cinema is known only due to the two famous directors who grew up there – Peter Jackson and Jane Campion – but it is still hardly known to the Polish audience. And films made there give one of the most interesting and intriguing images of a far-away and exotic country, showing a picture of New Zealanders’ mass imagination and its Maori origins. The Green Islands’ cinema will be presented in a broad perspective – from the earliest achievements to contemporary works. A special role in this review will be played by the pieces made in the golden era of the turn of the 1970s and 1980s, when international festivals were dominated by works by Roger Donaldson (Sleeping Dogs, 1977, Smash Palace, 1981) and Geoff Murphy (Goodbye Porky Pie, 1981, Utu, 1983). Another interesting accent will be the retrospective of New Zealand’s independent filmmaker Vincent Ward – the author of such legendary pieces as Vigil (1984) and The Navigator: a Medieval Odyssey (1988).