Welcome back to the jungle with Brando, Duvall, Fishburne and Hopper for Francis Ford Coppola’s final – and finest – version of the ultimate Vietnam War epic.   

Forty years after it almost killed him, Francis Ford Coppola returns to the jungle one last time. Both a complete restoration and a new cut, Apocalypse Now: Final Cut represents his fully realised vision. Even if you’ve seen his legendary, phantasmagorical journey into the heart of darkness, you’ve never seen it like this.
 
“The troubled production of Coppola’s psychedelic Vietnam War epic has already calcified into the stuff of industry myth: leading man Martin Sheen was nearly felled by a heart attack, second lead Marlon Brando showed up to set too overweight to believably portray a Green Beret, a monsoon seemingly sent by God destroyed thousands of dollars in equipment... The just-right Final Cut splits the difference between the creative concessions of the original and the unwieldy sprawl of the Redux, a massive feat of film craft reined in to the general neighbourhood of perfection… Coppola has at last gotten everything right where he wants it, which testifies to the real evolution of this project, as an insane risk that gradually vindicated everyone crazy enough to have believed in it.” — Charles Bramesco, The Guardian 

“Apocalypse Now is the best Vietnam film, one of the greatest of all films, because it pushes beyond the others, into the dark places of the soul.” — Roger Ebert

For the full NZIFF programme visit nziff.co.nz