Movies: Maori

Munro, a soldier turned lay preacher, comes to New Zealand to minister to the first British colonists, but he is converted by the powerful chief Maianui to serve a different purpose....

Hongi, a Maori chieftain’s teenage son, must avenge his father’s murder in order to bring peace and honour to the souls of his loved ones after his tribe is slaughtered through an act of treachery. Vastly outnumbered by a band of villains led by Wire...

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....

When an arranged marriage brings Ada and her spirited daughter to the wilderness of nineteenth-century New Zealand, she finds herself locked in a battle of wills with both her controlling husband and a rugged frontiersman to whom she develops a forbi...

Boy, an 11-year-old child and devout Michael Jackson fan who lives on the east coast of New Zealand in 1984, gets a chance to know his absentee criminal father, who has returned to find a bag of money he buried years ago....

An ex-Boer war guerrilla in New Zealand is sent out to bring back a Maori accused of killing a British soldier. Gradually they grow to know and respect one another but a posse, led by the British Commanding officer is close behind and his sole intent...

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...

An intimate story set during the 1860s in which a young Irish woman Sarah and her family find themselves on both sides of the turbulent wars between British and Maori during the British colonization of New Zealand....

A western set in New Zealand during the 1820s following a group of British pioneers seeking a new life Down Under....

Sophie loved Edmund, but he left town when her parents forced her to marry wealthy Octavius. Years later, Edmund returns with his son, William. Sophie's daughter, Marguerite, and William fall in love. Marguerite's sister, Marianne, also loves William...

This film is an intimate portrayal of pioneering filmmaker Merata Mita told through the eyes of her children. Using hours of archive footage, some never before seen, her youngest child and director Hepi Mita discovers the filmmaker he never knew and ...

Stories of Waitara combines oral histories, state of the art animations and powerful dramatic re-enactments to bring to life the narratives of Te Ātiawa in their epic battle against the military might of the British Empire. Created and presented by ...

Two young teenagers are forced to take control of their own destiny amid the chaos of a pivotal battle in New Zealand’s first land wars in 1864....

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...

In a sweeping tale that spans 1000 years and multiple generations – from the distant past to the 19th century, the present day and a strange, dystopian future – this landmark collection traces the collective histories of Indigenous peoples across Aus...

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...

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....

Eight Māori female directors have each contributed a sequence to this powerful and challenging feature which unfolds around the tangi of a small boy who died at the hands of his caregiver....

A psychological drama of a family in crisis. Kawa, a successful Māori businessman in Auckland, New Zealand, is forced to reveal his lifelong secret - that he is gay....

A Maori warrior comes upon the aftermath of a battle to find that the only survivor is a wounded enemy soldier. His wishes to avenge his fallen countrymen by finishing off this helpless enemy but the gods won't allow it (as conveyed to him through a ...