Gainsborough Films

Elder Birdsong is an animated musical short film in which 3 elderly birds: an ailing Owl, a physically challenged native Tui, and a couple of isolated migratory Korean Godwits sing about challenges of mobility, loneliness, and self-reliance. It is through their humour and dignity that these ageing birds demonstrate their resilience and provoke us to pick up the phone and get in touch with the elderly people in our lives. The film is a collaboration between public health scholars and filmmakers in New Zealand.

18-year-old Elliot lives and works on a small family-owned New Zealand dairy farm. He meanders out at dawn towards a herd of feeding cows where his attempt to take the wheel for the morning’s feed-out run is quickly overruled by his overbearing father. Elliot’s resentment grows with his increasingly apparent lack of autonomy and respect on the farm. A routine grocery trip sees Elliot bump into Laura, an enigmatic checkout operator and love interest, who pockets Elliot a pouch of tobacco on the sly, directing him to collect her later on that afternoon.