A drama about a Maori family living in Auckland, New Zealand. Lee Tamahori tells the story of Beth Heke’s strong will to keep her family together during times of unemployment and abuse from her violent and alcoholic husband.
A contemporary story of love, rejection, and triumph as a young Maori girl fights to fulfill a destiny her grandfather refuses to recognize.
This impressive doco disperses the fog of shame and sensationalism to shed light on the tragedy that made international headlines in 2007 when a young Wainuiomata woman died during a mākutu lifting.
A matriarch organizes a feast with her family, in which she will name her successor. The heart has gone out of Nanna Maria's family. There are no parties — they don't even fight anymore...
Short-film about a Māori boy who has a secret desire to be a drag queen and his inability to talk to his father.
Martin Clunes stars as a straight-laced museum curator who finds himself travelling to New Zealand to settle a dispute with a Maori community about an ancient carving - with unexpected consequences.
The story of famous New Zealand cricketer, Bob Blair and his fiance Nerissa Love, whose young life was shattered by the 1953 Tangiwai Disaster.
After a period of separation, Sarah visits her research scientist mother on a remote New Zealand island. Before long Sarah becomes inextricably involved in events involving both Maori legend and an Albatross.
At an academy for mythological warriors, 17-year-old Hercules meets Jason, the next in line to rule Corinth. When Jason discovers that his father is ill, Hercules decides to seek out the Golden Fleece that could cure him. But limitations to his powers, as well as his half-brother Ares, stand in his way.
One summer’s day, Jayde and Wiremu tag along with their older siblings on a trip to a local swimming hole; young passions ignite by the Rotorua hot pool. Later, tragedy occurs and Jayde faces lost innocence and the ritual of tangi while bearing a secret.
Billy (Cliff Curtis) is trying to organize the biggest celebration the town of Waimatua has even seen - the 75th Jubilee of their school. In doing this, feckless Billy is trying to redeem himself in the eyes of his family, especially his frustrated wife Pauline (Theresa Healey). However trouble arrives with the return of a local former All Blacks Captain, an old flame of Pauline's.
Six Māori Battalion soldiers camped in Italian ruins wait for night to fall. In the silence, the bros-in-arms distract themselves with jokes. A tohu (sign) brings them back to reality, and they gather to say a karakia before returning to the fray. Director Taika Waititi describes the soldiers as young men with "a special bond, strengthened by their character, their culture and each other.
Aftershock follows four groups of people in the minutes, hours and days after Wellington is struck by a magnitude 8.2 earthquake and subsequent tsunami. Buried office workers must pull together. Strangers, caught by the tsunami on a ruined motorway, put themselves in danger to save others. A mother must reunite her family. And, at the centre of the rescue operation, a controller is bunkered down at Wellington’s Emergency Management Office.
Five years have passed and Jake has turned his back on his family. He's still up to his usual tricks in McClutchy's Bar, unaware, as he downs his latest opponent, that his eldest son, Nig, has died in a gang fight. The uncomfortable family reunion at Nig's funeral sparks a confrontation with second son, Sonny, and sets Jake and Sonny on a downward spiral.
When a Japanese pilot crash-lands on the tiny remote Hawaiian island of Ni'ihau, he is met with courtesy and traditional Hawaiian hospitality from the locals - until they discover he was part of the recent attack on Pearl Harbor. Soon the community is split between those of Japanese ancestry who support the pilot and those of Hawaiian ancestry who oppose them.
After the death of his uncle, a young man remembers back to a game his uncle taught him.
When a storm washes a canoe bearing an infant boy ashore upon a small South Pacific island, he is at first well-received as a gift from the heavens, even to the point of the tribal chief adopting him as a successor. However, with time as hardships are blamed upon Tama (as he is named), he is finally outcast to live with the poorest people on the island, Mahana and her drunken father. Mahana is considered homely and undesirable, but Tama feels differently, so when he is old enough to build a craft to sail away, he vows to return for her one day. A lucky stroke brings him to land upon the island of the legendary Johnny Lingo, the wealthiest trader in the islands, and after years of service to him, Tama has learned much about life and himself as he dreams of honoring his pledge to Mahana.
In Rain of the Children, Ward further explores the subject of his earlier film, In Spring One Plants Alone when, as a young film student he travelled to the Ureweras and documented the lives of an elderly Māori woman (Puhi) and her schizophrenic son (Niki).
Ariana is in trouble with the law. Aided by a sympathetic social worker the young Māori woman defends herself against assault charges after a police raid on her home.
It's been 20 years snce Once Were Warriors was made. Julian Arahanga aka 'Nig' takes us on a journey to meet the cast and see where they are now.