Growing up in Scotland in the early 2000s, we generally knew three things about New Zealand: the country was stupidly good at rugby, it was the far-off land where The Lord of the Rings was filmed, and its people had a preternatural gift for quirky, offbeat comedy.
From Jemaine Clement and Bret McKenzie taking Flight of the Conchords to HBO, to Taika Waititi’s insane four-peat run between 2007-2016 (Eagle vs Shark, Boy, What We Do in the Shadows, followed by his best, Hunt for the Wilderpeople), New Zealand’s reputation for this type of comedy now precedes itself. Where Australian humour can be too brash and boorish — a little wannabe-American — the comedy that consistently pours out of Aotearoa is much more idiosyncratic and unpretentious.
An up-and-coming directing duo are now ready to stake their place in the country’s proud lineage of unique comedy.
THUNDERLIPS are Sean Wallace and Jordan Mark Windsor, two Auckland-based filmmakers who have found the perfect chemistry working together as co-directors.
Lke SPORTS TEAM, the duo behind another great new Kiwi comedy, The Weed Eaters, Wallace and Windsor (don’t those surnames just sound ideal side by side?) started out making music videos — and commercials — before transitioning to shorts and feature films.
Their biggest and best project to date is Mum, I’m Alien Pregnant, a comedy-horror that went down a treat in Sundance’s Midnight Madness section.
“Mary is a slacker living with her mother and still trying to figure out what to do with her life in New Zealand suburbia. After an awkward sexual encounter with her neighbour, she suddenly finds herself in the midst of an accelerated alien pregnancy!” the official logline reveals.
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“What follows is a classic kiwi gross out take on pregnancy and parenthood that is not afraid to get weird.”
THUNDERLIPS assembled a fine group of actors for their film, including Hannah Lynch — already familiar to our readers for her excellent musical project, Hun Lynch — in a breakout role as Mary, the reluctant mother to be, Arlo Green as the half-alien baby-daddy, and Yvette Parsons as Mary’s overbearing mother.
Mum, I’m Alien Pregnant, filled as it is with quirky Kiwi comedy touches and enjoyably gruesome special effects, might be boisterous and chaotic, but there’s an important message at the heart of the film. “We hope it encourages people who have gone through the real-life horrors of pregnancy and birth to enjoy the catharsis of sharing their own stories, and we hope the movie makes people who don’t want children to feel seen,” THUNDERLIPS explain.
Following its Sundance showcase, Mum, I’m Alien Pregnant cemented the pair’s burgeoning reputation by picking up the New Flesh Best First Feature gong at Montreal’s Fantasia Festival, and THUNDERLIPS are now taking their film to New Zealand International Film Festival 2026 for a special homecoming premiere tomorrow (August 7th).
Read my full conversation with the exciting filmmaking duo below, in which we discuss the body horror genre, their Sundance experience, where the hell their duo name comes from, the positives and negatives of working in the Aotearoa film industry, and much more.
Find out more about Mum, I’m Alien Pregnant here.
Rolling Stone AU/NZ: Tell us about your cast. Was it a fun group to work with? We’ve covered Hannah on Rolling Stone before, for her music.
THUNDERLIPS: You have great taste – Hannah is so talented, she really carries the emotional core of the movie on her shoulders… While everyone else gets to be in a comedy, she has to be in a body-horror movie.
We got Jackie Van Beek onboard to play one of the titular mums, and she emphatically recommended we get Yvette Parsons to play the other mum. They had a great rapport, as did Hannah and Arlo Green who plays a boy with an alien body part. Jonny Brugh was perfectly cast as a dismissive doctor, we loved having him on set, [and] we also had Karen O’Leary, Angella Dravid, and Sir Ian Mune! We are actually really spoiled for acting talent here in Tāmaki.
So this builds on your previous short film, right? Did you always want to expand said short film?
We actually wrote the feature first, but our producers informed us that the financiers were unlikely to consider us as viable directors unless we made a short as a proof-of-concept first. So we took a scene out of the feature and adapted it into a short. We applied for [NZ] Film Commission funding for the short and didn’t get it the first time around, so we kept working on the script and applied again six months later and got it.
What is it about Kiwis that makes them so good at comedy?
There’s something innately deadpan about Kiwi humour and the culture at-large. Local filmmakers and audiences before us discovered that this dry sensitivity pairs hilariously with extreme situations and supernatural stuff, because it’s hilarious to watch people in those situations under-react. Our contribution to that tradition is that we’ve combined that dryness with the dismissive vibe that women often get from male doctors during their pregnancies.
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Did you watch a lot of body horror in preparation?
Not really. We grew up watching [David] Cronenberg movies like The Fly, Crash, and Scanners, also films like Alien, The Thing etc. so we already had that visual language burned into our psyches. But we did show the cast and crew a few films from that list, plus Eagle vs Shark and Lady Bird as a way to set the vibe for the kind of movie we wanted to make.
Did you have a lot of fun with the special effects for this one?
We wanted to do the effects with prosthetics and in-camera tricks as much as possible. This was fun, but it’s also REALLY HARD to do well on a budget, so the hardest days on set were the ones involving all the various bodily/alien fluids and prosthetics. It becomes a game of shooting around their inadequacies and making it work as best you can. The cast definitely enjoy interacting with things they could touch and react to.
How did it feel to showcase the film at Sundance? Dream come true?
Haha, well, we set ourselves the goal of not saying “dream come true” as it was such a cliché. But yes, it absolutely was. Also really cold, overwhelming, scary, exciting, silly, and humbling. It was kinda like cosplaying being a hotshot director. Also, we broke the waste disposal unit in the gorgeous cabin that Sundance provided for us. We’re still feeling bad about that.
What’s one thing you hope viewers get out of your film?
We hope it encourages people who have gone through the real-life horrors of pregnancy and birth to enjoy the catharsis of sharing their own stories, and we hope the movie makes people who don’t want children to feel seen.
I’ve got to ask: where does a name like ‘THUNDERLIPS’ come from?!
We started out in music videos where having a duo name was pretty normal, so we were talking about it and the name came to us from the same unknowable place that all great ideas come from, out of nowhere, and it made us chuckle so we stuck with it.
How did you first meet?
Well, we met in a café where one of us asked the other to be their cinematographer on a short film… and got turned down. But the pestering continued until he changed his mind, then we wound up working as each other’s cinematographers, until because of an organisational error we both showed up to direct the same music video and we just went with it and it turned out to be the best thing we’d ever done, so here we are 14 years later.
What makes you click so well as a duo?
We almost couldn’t be more different personality-wise, but we both like taking the hard road when it comes to making art. We’ll take it in turns to push the other one to make an idea better and not settle for the easy-out. Beyond that, it’s some kind of magical glitch in the universe that brought us together, because as a duo there’s some sort of special sauce that comes from combining two humans into one creative organism.
How has your experience in commercials impacted your filmmaking style?
We always wanted to make movies, so in our commercial work we are always experimenting with techniques that we hoped to use someday in long-form work. I reckon starting out in commercials and music videos gave us a chance to try all the crazy shit we’ve always wanted to do, so when it came to making the movie we were able to set that aside and serve the story with simple, tasteful shots.
Who’s your favourite (other) filmmaking duo?
It’s impossible to just pick one! How about three? Powell and Pressburger, The Coen Brothers, The Daniels.
On top of that, who is your biggest filmmaking inspiration?
If we had to pick one, it’s probably PTA [Paul Thomas Anderson] . His back catalogue is astounding.
Is there another Kiwi filmmaker coming through that you’re excited about?
Yes! Alex Liu – he’s making a movie right now so he asked us to watch his rough cut and it was awesome. Check him out.
Tell me about being a working filmmaker in Aotearoa today. How do you find it?
Frankly, it’s nearly impossible if you want to make a living out of it. Side hustles are a must. At the same time, I think the industry and the funders are taking bigger risks which is exciting for the new wave of filmmakers coming up. The latest data seems to suggest that young people are going to the cinema more than the oldies thought they would, so that’s hopeful.
Are funding opportunities easy or difficult to come by?
We have a wonderful rebate system here, which makes it possible for movies like ours to get made here and encourages international market partners to consider working with us. Aside from that, we’ve had a lot of support over the years from the NZ Writers Guild, Script-to-Screen, and the Film Commission – a little bit of funding goes a long way to encouraging wannabe filmmakers like us to keep writing and keep trying to get stuff made.
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What one thing would you change about the Aotearoa film industry?
Our industry has a bad track record when it comes to sexual assault and harassment, and that’s at least in part because the film industry can be very hierarchical, which results in some people being more at risk and powerful people’s bad behaviour being ignored. None of that is okay. We’d like our industry to be a safe place where everyone’s contributions to the movie are cherished.
What other films have you worked on in recent years?
It’s taken all of recent memory just to make this one film! But in less recent years, we both worked a little on Hunt for the Wilderpeople… does that count?
Do you have any future projects lined up?
We’re working on a few projects… One is a horror about rock climbers, another is a comedy about drinking piss, and with the third we’re sworn to utter secrecy.
From Rolling Stone AU/NZ