The Auckland leg of the New Zealand International Film Festival has overcome what organisers are calling "volatile and uncertain times" to sell more than 100,000 tickets.

Festival director Bill Gosden said while the final calculations are still being tallied, current figures put sales at 101,500 tickets; the second best sales in the festival's history.

The biggest audiences turned out for Moonrise Kingdom, West of Memphis, The Cabin in the Woods, The Angels' Share, No, Amour, Beasts of the Southern Wild, Marley, Barbara, From Up On Poppy Hill and the final night double-header screening of Charlie Chaplin's Easy Street and Alfred Hitchcock's Blackmail, which were accompanied by the Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra.

Gosden said while seats were filled at the festival - despite the Olympics running for 10 of the 17 days it was on - there were some disappointments.

Audience numbers for American documentary Bully were small, with many local schools failing to respond to invitations for the screening, and documentary screenings at the Auckland Art Gallery experienced technical difficulties.

The festival's ticketing system has also come under the spotlight. Gosden said Ticketek worked much better than any other provider, with 5,000 tickets processed within hours of first going on sale. 

But the question of price remains, with the online service not well suited to multiple bookings and not suitably priced for single ones. To have a single ticket sent to the buyer's mobile phone cost an extra $5 on top of the ticket price, which many movie fans found unreasonable.

Gosden said festival organisers "live in hope" for a solution to the problem.

The New Zealand International Film Festival is now moving its way around the country, before wrapping up in Masterton at the end of October.

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- © Fairfax NZ News

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