Trailer Unveiled for CATERPILLAR, the Feature Debut of Chelsie Preston Crayford
The official trailer has been unveiled today for CATERPILLAR, the debut feature from award-winning New Zealand actor and filmmaker Chelsie Preston Crayford (A Remarkable Place to Die, Underbelly: Razor).
Set in Wellington in 2003, CATERPILLAR is a moving, multi-generational drama about three women living under one roof as the delicate balance of their family begins to unravel. When a grandmother’s mind begins to fail, a teenage girl and her single-mother filmmaker are drawn into a journey that will redefine love, responsibility, and what it means to let go.
Cast Across Three Generations
The film stars:
- Marta Dusseldorp (Bay of Fires, A Place to Call Home)
- RADA-trained screen and stage icon Lisa Harrow (The Last Days of Chez Nous, The Brokenwood Mysteries)
- Anais Shand (Mystic, The Shannara Chronicles)
Together, they deliver powerful performances across three pivotal stages of womanhood.
A Story of Transformation
The newly released trailer offers a first look at the film’s emotionally charged storytelling and richly textured early-2000s setting. The key art introduces the film’s central visual motif: the Monarch caterpillar and butterfly, symbolising transformation, fragility, and resilience.
CATERPILLAR marks Preston Crayford’s transition into feature filmmaking, building on her award-winning short films Here Now, Imposter, and Falling Up.
While inspired by her own maternal line, the film is not autobiographical. Preston Crayford describes it as a story about women navigating change, individually and collectively.
“The film is a work of autofiction,” she says. “It’s inspired by my experience of growing up in a matriarchy, but the story isn’t factual. It’s a fable about three very different women muddling through three very pivotal life stages with everyone’s needs colliding. You could describe it as a coming of age for an entire maternal line.”
Release Details
Anchored in deeply recognisable family dynamics, CATERPILLAR explores intimate and familiar relationships, inviting audiences to see themselves on screen, and to have a laugh and a cry along the way.
CATERPILLAR will be released theatrically in New Zealand on May 14, 2026, and is distributed by Madman Entertainment.
The film is produced by Georgina Conder (Cousins, Red, White & Brass) and Andrew Marshall (Falling Up, The Power of the Dog), and was made with the support of Te Tumu Whakaata Taonga, the New Zealand Film Commission.
