A six-member Ōtūmoetai College film team has gone from a Friday night genre draw to regional winners in 48 hours.

The Bourgeoisie was the only New Zealand school team selected as a finalist in any of the four regional finals of 2026 Vista Foundation 48Hours competition.

Their five-minute film, Family Kids, was one of 15 films screened in the Across Aotearoa regional final on September 18. It won Best School Team, securing them a nomination at the Grand National Final this month.

The team comprise writers/directors Jayden Dent and Aadit Tandon, editor/sound Drew Bryan, and actors Isabella Fitt, Izzy Peers and Alec Newington.

They also received nominations for Regional Manager Award and Best Sound Design.

The students had 48 hours to write, film, edit and submit their movie after receiving their genre and four compulsory elements at 7pm on July 31.

The makeshift recording studio where the Bourgeoisie team recorded their song vocals.

The team drew The Family Movie as their genre but quickly decided against taking the obvious route.

“We spun it in our own way,” Bryan said.

The idea that stuck was a parody of an old-school 1980s sitcom.

Their logline sums it up: “A neighbourhood kid visits his friend, but the casual hangout takes a bizarre turn when he unknowingly steps into the set of an 80s sitcom.”

Scriptwriting continued into the early hours of August 1, with Dent saying he and Tandon were still working at about 2am when doubts began to creep in.

“Around 3 o’clock, we nearly turned the entire thing around and started looking for a new script,” he said.

They decided to stick with it. “And it turned out great.”

Filming started late in the morning on August 1 because the students had to work around the availability of their actors. Borrowing a house from a parent’s friend, they completed filming in about six hours.

The Bourgeoisie team from Ōtūmoetai College borrowed a home from a parent’s friend to film their 48Hours film in.

“It was pretty hectic,” Dent said.

“There were multiple times throughout that when I was just like, ‘Are we actually going to get this done on time?’”

Once filming wrapped, they returned to the college and went straight into editing.

Bryan spent much of the night on August 1 synchronising the audio, working until about 4am on August 2.

The team’s preparation before the competition included 3D-printing an attachment to mount their microphones on a pole, helping them capture sound.

Their efforts paid off with a Best Sound Design nomination.

Bryan said adding the sitcom-style laugh tracks was another moment when he knew the film was coming together.

“As soon as I started adding the laugh tracks, I was like, ‘This is sounding really good’.”

He said they had now competed in 48Hours three times, previously tackling the Splatter and Fairytale genres.

“I think in previous years we’ve had catastrophic failures, but it went more smoothly this year and we made our own theme song and it’s really good.”

Editing of the film took place at Ōtūmoetai College.

However, this year’s success was unexpected, the team said.

“We maybe thought that we had a chance getting on to the shortlist, maybe getting nominated for Best School,” Dent said.

“But I don’t think we ever thought that we were actually going to make or win the regional finals.”

The film had also received praise at school.

“Mr Buxton [a teacher] said our film is probably the best 48-hour film the school has produced, which is pretty cool. And some other teachers have said it is surprisingly good.”

Peers also designed the film poster, which was a winner in the Letterboxd poster competition.

For Dent and Bryan, both in their final year at Ōtūmoetai, film-making may continue alongside their interest in engineering, and they’re not ready to put their cameras away just yet.

“I’m still really keen to continue doing this competition and doing other competitions and making films,” Dent said.

The top films from the four regional competitions – Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch and Across Aotearoa – progress to the grand final at Wellington’s Embassy Theatre on October 17.