Award-winning filmmaker Pietra Brettkelly is celebrating international success after her latest documentary, Crocodile, claimed three major awards in just three weeks, including Best Film in the Viewpoints category at New York’s prestigious Tribeca Film Festival.

The documentary, co-directed and co-produced by Brettkelly and a group of young Nigerian filmmakers known as The Critics, follows their journey from imaginative children making homemade science-fiction films to internationally recognised filmmakers.

Filmed over seven years and spanning 13 years of the group’s lives, Crocodile centres on cousins and siblings growing up in Kaduna, Nigeria.

Armed with little more than a mobile phone, unreliable electricity and vivid imaginations, they transformed a backyard into a world of spaceships, explosions and futuristic adventures.

Brettkelly said she was inspired by their determination.

“They were making films in a place with very few resources, yet they were still being creative,” she said.

Together they have produced 54 short films, and today the collective’s core members – Raymond Yusuff, Ronald Yusuff, Richard Yusuff, Godwin Josiah and Victor Josiah – recently completed their first feature drama.

After discovering their work online, Brettkelly travelled to Nigeria to meet them.

Rather than simply documenting their story, she taught the young filmmakers how to shoot documentary footage themselves, allowing the film to be shaped from their perspective.

“For the first couple of years I was teaching them documentary filmmaking,” she said.

“Then it became their point of view, their decisions about what to film and how to film it.”

The result is a documentary that blends observational filmmaking, science fiction and magical realism.

The Critics are not only the subjects of the film, but also co-directors, co-producers and co-owners.

“This was a beautiful collaboration,” Brettkelly said.

The approach has resonated with international audiences.

Crocodile premiered at the Berlin International Film Festival in February, where all four screenings sold out within minutes. It has since won the Youth Jury Award at the Sheffield Documentary Festival in the United Kingdom, Best Documentary at the Docs Against Gravity Festival in Poland, and Best Film in Tribeca’s Viewpoints section.

For Brettkelly, the Tribeca win is especially significant.

“Viewpoints includes both drama and documentary films, so it was really exciting,” she said.

Documentaries could sometimes be put in their own corner, she said, but she has always believed documentary is cinema.

“I’m thrilled that we won this award. It’s completely unexpected because there were all these amazing drama films in the section.”

The success has propelled Crocodile onto the international festival circuit, with screenings continuing.

Five members of The Critics joined Brettkelly for the Berlin premiere.

“They are so much fun to travel with. They make me look at life differently.”

The film reflects Brettkelly’s long-standing interest in creative people working in challenging circumstances.

“I’m drawn to creatives who live in isolation, whether that’s geographical, cultural or financial,” she said.

“I’m interested in their resilience, their creativity and how they survive.”

Trust, she said, was fundamental throughout the filmmaking process.

“Trust is at the core of what I do. If I lose the trust of my subjects, I don’t have a great film.

“And I want to make great films every time. I want to make films that really soar, and that requires an amazing amount of trust from my subjects.”

Based in Auckland, Brettkelly has filmed in countries including Afghanistan, Libya and South Sudan. She says curiosity continues to drive her work.

“I don’t try to overthink these things because then I might not do any of it. But I’m not careless, I am careful, but I’m also a risk taker. I educate myself. I ask lots of questions of the locals.”

The internationally acclaimed filmmaker traces much of that curiosity back to her upbringing in Whakatāne and Ōhope, where she still has family.

“My parents have brought us up to always be curious and always be inquisitive and to wonder at other people ... The freedom I had growing up in Whakatāne and Ōhope, and the bicultural nature of life there, has been incredibly important in how I view the world,” she said.

Brettkelly also acknowledges the support network she has, and that she can always come home: “All those amazing people I grew up with who still are my besties and still support me.

“There’s nothing like that. There’s nothing like thinking I have that safety net. I’m overseas a lot, either filming or directing films or going to festivals, markets, pitching.”

New Zealand audiences will have the chance to see Crocodile when it screens as part of the New Zealand International Film Festival before its nationwide cinema release next year, including screenings at Whakamax.