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....

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...

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....

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....

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...

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...

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 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...

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....

New Zealand chronicle of the life of noted writer and teacher, Sylvia Ashton-Warner. An interesting look at the unusual teaching methods she used while working with the children from the indigenous Maon....

Three Maori youths, bored with Auckland, head south in a restored Mark II Zephyr in search of something different. One of them is on the run from drug dealers, whom he had crossed. Various mini-adventures occurs as they make their way down the Nor...

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 ...

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....

‘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...

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...

The story of Dame Whina Cooper, the beloved Māori matriarch who worked tirelessly to improve the rights of her people, especially women. Flawed yet resilient, Whina tells the story of a woman formed by tradition, compelled by innovation, and guided b...

Will Bastion returns home from the army after an absence of 20 years to bury his father, the former chief of thee Maori tribe, Ngati Kaipuku. The eldest son, he is reluctant to inherit his fathers role, so it is taken more willingly by his younger br...

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 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 ...

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...