Toa Fraser’s beautifully photographed film captures the Royal New Zealand Ballet’s staging of the classic — about a deceptive nobleman’s punishment at the hands of vengeful spirits — while suggesting a fictionalized, parallel love story offstage between the two lead dancers.

Giselle is acclaimed director Toa Fraser's interpretation of the Royal New Zealand Ballet's production of Giselle. The classic story of love, eroticism and death has been reinterpreted by Fraser to include both the onstage performance of the ballet, and an offstage romance that tells of two itinerant dancers, separated by time, distance and their abiding love for each other.