Everyone Ignores Peter Jackson’s Underrated Film Forgotten Silver

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Sir Peter Jackson will be honored with a special Palme d’Or at the 2026 Cannes Film Festival. Unlike the typical Palme d’Or, which recognizes a single film, this award celebrates Jackson’s entire filmmaking career. Though he’s famous for directing The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit trilogies, his earlier films are also noteworthy—one even received a perfect 100% rating from critics on Rotten Tomatoes.

Following the success of his biographical drama Heavenly Creatures, which was a departure from his usual horror and comedy work, Peter Jackson tried his hand at a different type of film. Released in 1995, Forgotten Silver was a fake documentary about the rediscovery of lost films by a made-up New Zealand director named Colin McKenzie. While it’s not often talked about now, Forgotten Silver was an important film in Jackson’s early career, and it actually caused quite a bit of controversy when it first came out.

Forgotten Silver Was a Misunderstood Love Letter to Film History

In his book Forgotten Silver, Colin McKenzie was presented as a forgotten innovator in early cinema. The film footage showed he achieved several milestones before others, including what is believed to be the first tracking shot in 1901 and the first film with synchronized sound in 1908. Remarkably, footage from one of McKenzie’s films also appeared to show a working airplane built by Richard Pearse, months before the Wright brothers’ famous flight.

Actually, Jackson filmed everything himself, intentionally making it look like movies from the early 1900s. To make his project, Forgotten Silver, seem real, he worked with documentary filmmaker Costa Botes as a co-director. He even got well-known actors like Sam Neill, famous from Jurassic Park, to talk about the fictional filmmaker McKenzie’s work.

When Forgotten Silver first appeared on New Zealand television, it was presented as a real documentary, successfully fooling many viewers. However, when the director admitted it was a hoax, there was a strong public reaction. One particularly angry letter to the New Zealand Listener even suggested the filmmakers should be punished. As a result of this outrage, the television station, TVNZ, decided not to show the program again.

Most large-scale hoaxes cause a big reaction, but the response to Forgotten Silver was particularly strong. Jackson had tapped into New Zealanders’ national pride by making them believe a New Zealander had played a hidden but crucial role in the history of film. Fortunately for Jackson, this initial, angry reaction didn’t end the conversation. Many people later came to see Forgotten Silver as a brilliant work, which explains its lasting reputation.

Reviewers Loved Forgotten Silver Despite the Controversy

The number of people who believed Forgotten Silver was real shows just how talented a filmmaker Jackson is. He expertly recreated footage that looked like it was from almost a hundred years ago, even including scenes of actual historical events. However, knowing that the film is actually fiction makes the more outlandish parts of McKenzie’s story even funnier.

Jackson recounted an incident where McKenzie allegedly embarrassed his family by stealing 24,000 eggs – apparently, McKenzie needed the egg whites for his unusual photographic experiments. Though Forgotten Silver was relatively understated, Jackson always envisioned it as a comedy, and it included several funny scenes.

The perfect 100% score on Rotten Tomatoes for Forgotten Silver is partly due to the fact that very few critics reviewed it – only ten, to be exact. This small number meant there wasn’t much chance for negative reviews to lower the overall score. The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, for instance, had an average score based on 270 reviews. However, Forgotten Silver isn’t just a critical darling; it also has a strong 82% audience score, based on over 2,500 reviews, proving its success wasn’t a coincidence.

Jackson’s early film, Forgotten Silver, influenced his work on The Lord of the Rings trilogy. He brought back some of the same people he’d worked with before, most notably casting Thomas Robins – who had played McKenzie – in The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King. Additionally, Botes directed a behind-the-scenes documentary for The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring.

It’s ironic that Forgotten Silver, despite being a significant early work, isn’t widely remembered. The film and the debate it sparked were mostly focused in New Zealand, limiting its international reach. When it was revealed to be a cleverly constructed fake, some of its initial appeal faded. Plus, it was quickly overshadowed by the massive success of The Lord of the Rings. However, with Peter Jackson receiving honors at the Cannes Film Festival, now is a great time for audiences to revisit his entire career, including this critically acclaimed mockumentary.

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2026-03-08 07:07