Pecking Order is a 2017 New Zealand comedy

documentary film A documentary film or documentary is a non-fictional film, motion-picture intended to "document reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction, education or maintaining a Recorded history, historical record". Bill Nichols (film critic), Bil ...

about competitive

poultry show A poultry show is a specific subset of a livestock show that involves the exhibition and competition of exhibition poultry, which may include chickens, domestic ducks, domestic geese, domestic guineafowl and domestic turkey. Domestic pigeon ar ...

ing by Slavko Martinov. The film was shot primarily in

Christchurch Christchurch ( ; mi, Ōtautahi) is the largest city in the South Island of New Zealand and the seat of the Canterbury Region. Christchurch lies on the South Island's east coast, just north of Banks Peninsula on Pegasus Bay. The Avon River / ...

, New Zealand. It opened theatrically in New Zealand on 18 May 2017 and on 29 September 2017 in UK and Ireland.

Release

The film had its world premiere on 29 April 2017 at the 2017

Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival The Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival is the largest documentary festival in North America. The event takes place annually in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. The 27th edition of the festival took place online throughout May and June ...

. The film had its New Zealand premiere in Christchurch (at

Hoyts The Hoyts Group of companies in Australia and New Zealand includes Hoyts Cinemas and Val Morgan. Hoyts operates more than 450 cinema screens and 55,000 seats, making it Australia's second largest movie exhibitor after Event Hospita ...

in their

Riccarton Riccarton may refer to: New Zealand * Riccarton, New Zealand, a suburb of Christchurch ** Riccarton (New Zealand electorate), the electorate named after it ** The location of Riccarton Race Course * a locality on the Taieri Plains in Otago Scotlan ...

theatre) on 9 May 2017, before its nationwide theatrical release on 18 May 2017.

Reception

Rotten Tomatoes Rotten Tomatoes is an American review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee, and Stephen Wang ...

the film has an approval rate of 95% based on reviews from 20 critics. Francesca Rudkin of ''

The New Zealand Herald ''The New Zealand Herald'' is a daily newspaper published in Auckland, New Zealand, owned by New Zealand Media and Entertainment, and considered a newspaper of record for New Zealand. It has the largest newspaper circulation of all newspapers ...

'' gave the film four (out of five) stars, describing it as "a heartwarming Kiwi classic". Fionnuala Halligan of Screen Daily called the film "a feathered real life tribute to Best in Show" and "an affectionate crowdpleaser".

References

2017 films New Zealand documentary films {{2010s-documentary-film-stub