A Christchurch school has taken out the Best New Zealand Film award at the annual Uni Shorts student film festival.

The film, A Perfect Child, tells the story of a young girl in an orphanage who comes to realise that fellow orphans are being cloned to create perfect children.

The film was made by about 60 students at Christ's College and St. Margaret's College and took a year to make.

Students were involved in every aspect of production, including writing, directing, casting, costuming and post-production.

A Perfect Child also won the Best Secondary School category with judges praising the students for their strong premise and depth of talent.

Runner-up in the category was Kapiti College with Black Dog.

"Uni Shorts is one of the only film festivals in the world to celebrate student filmmaking and we're very proud to be curating and hosting this event," says festival chairwoman Dr Vanessa Byrnes.

"The range of films we've seen this year was particularly strong, and we look forward to following the success of our winners, particularly those from the younger age categories who are debuting their film-making talents at Uni Shorts."

The film festival is a celebration of student film-making from around the world curated and hosted by Unitec Institute of Technology.

The festival runs from Thursday until Sunday in Auckland.

- NZ Newswire