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A landmark in both New Zealand and First Peoples cinema, this affecting and beautifully shot film about a seaside Maori community in the late 1940s was the first fiction feature to be written and directed by a Maori filmmaker.
Restored print!
Set in the fictional Maori community of Kapua in 1948, Ngati interweaves three narrative strands: the arrival of a young Australian doctor (Ross Girven), who is reluctantly staying with old family friends at his father's behest; the struggle of a young boy (Oliver Jones), who is dying of leukemia; and the community's fight to prevent the closure of a local factory, the only source of employment for most of the town's residents. Gentle, affecting and beautifully shot, Ngati is a quietly powerful assertion of the necessity for Indigenous peoples to control their own resources, communities and identities.