Movies: Maori

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....

This docudrama follows an imaginary news reporter who travels back in time to cover the days leading up to the Treaty of Waitangi's signing on 6 February 1840. Dropping the usual solemnity surrounding Aotearoa's founding document, it uses humour and ...

Ivan is the fierce patriarch of a family of Croatian refugees living in Auckland during the Yugoslav wars. Nina is his daughter, ready to live on her own, despite his angry objections. Eddie is the Maori she takes as her lover. Nina works at the rest...

Lucy Lawless stars in this short which predated her rise to fame as Xena Princess Warrior. Sal is in a relationship going nowhere with Mog, a layabout who shows her no respect. A chance encounter with an easy-going female truck driver (Lawless) encou...

‘The Legend of Baron To’a’ tells the story of Fritz, a Tongan entrepreneur who returns to his old neighbourhood and inadvertently causes the theft of his late father’s valued pro wrestling title belt by some ruthless gangsters led by ‘man-mountain’ T...

Logan, an ex-gang leader, has left the gang life to raise his daughter Tori. But when Tori is murdered by an opposing gang in town, Logan must choose forgiveness or revenge....

Rewi Rapana returns to the small country town of Te Mata after his family has left the district. His arrival rekindles old tensions as well as renewing family ties. He is seeking an identity and a permanent place to call home yet desperately hiding a...

At the end of the 18th century, hundreds of Indian sailors, known as lascars, worked amongst European settlers in Aotearoa New Zealand - often under the gruesome working conditions of seal hunting gangs. The story follows a lascar, Dasa, who has bee...

After skipping town a decade ago, transgender activist Caz Davis returns to the remote, politically divided dairy community of Rurangi, hoping to reconnect with his estranged father, who hasn't heard from him since before Caz transitioned....

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....

American-born Anna Vorontosov teaches school in a remote, primitive section of northern New Zealand. Her experimental teaching methods have won her the love and affection of her pupils and their parents and the admiration of the unhappily married sch...

A hundred years after the theft from New Zealand of three irreplaceable tribal carvings, two Maori, Rewi and Peter, decide it's time for ancient grievances to be put right. Both men are in Berlin where the carvings are stored in a museum. Plans go aw...

Monica arrives back from her big overseas experience to find her boyfriend Nick unchanged. Although Nick styles himself an artist, he is really something of a cultural redneck, and when the couple head up north for a break, and they meet up with R...

Barry Barclay was a New Zealand/Aotearoa director of documentaries and feature films. He is regarded as one of the world's first, and very influential, Indigenous film makers. The film The Camera on The Shore is a feature length introduction to Barry...

Merata Mita, Leon Narbey and Gerd Pohlmann’s powerful documentary Bastion Point: Day 507 depicts the eviction of protestors from Bastion Point during the struggle for Māori land rights....

In a Maori settlement, Ngati Toa leader Te Rauparaha composes the famous chant "Ka Mate", also known as the haka, after evading enemy capture by hiding in a kumara pit....

A documentary about the history of settler groups that came to New Zealand from Europe....

Star-crossed lovers, Robert and Ariana, are caught up in the New Zealand wars of the 1860s. Ariana is claimed by the Maniapoto people as one of their own and, despite Robert's chivalrous defence, is taken by them and must help them prepare for war...

Operation 8 examines the so-called 'anti-terror' raids that took place around New Zealand on October 15, 2007 - asking how and why they took place and at what cost to those targeted....

TAKE (te reo Maori: issue, promise, challenge) weaves mana wahine (female knowledge), dance and archival materials to retell the story of the removal of the ancestral Maori meetinghouse, Hinemihi o te Ao Tawhito, from Aotearoa, New Zealand to England...