Pietra Brettkelly is an award-winning New Zealand filmmaker who travels the world to make her documentaries.

Art Star and the Sudanese Twins, her Sundance-selected film about international adoption, won best director and documentary at the 2009 Qantas Film and TV Awards. Maori Boy Genius was invited to the Berlin, Sydney and NZ Film Festivals. Brettkelly is currently filming a documentary on a Chinese designer who dressed pop star Rihanna.

In this ScreenTalk, Brettkelly talks about:

• How a conversation in a bar led to documentary Beauty Will Save the World
• Spending a "crazy couple of weeks" with terrifed beauty queens in Libya for the documentary
• The challenges and tensions of making The Art Star and the Sudanese Twins
• Feeling constrained when filming New Zealand documentary Maori Boy Genius
• Persuading reluctant men with guns to let her film A Flickering Truth in Afghanistan
• Her new film about Chinese designer Guo Pei, who designed an eye-catching dress for Rihanna
• How she keeps making films about people who don’t speak English

This video is available on YouTube to embed and distribute via this Creative Commons licence.

Courtesy of NZ On Screen: Camera and Editing – Andrew Whiteside