Female Film Critics 24/375
Taratoa Stappard crafts a moody and spellbinding tale of revenge and reclamation. Mārama is a true genre gem with an ever-relevant focus on the violence of colonialism and the overarching reach of greedy and insatiable men who twist legacy. Imaginative and vivid with a keen sense of the works that came before it, Mārama does what it intends to with perfection.
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From its opening frame, Māori filmmaker Josephine Stewart-Te Whiu’s alternately enraging and celebratory “We Were Dangerous” announces an assured screen debut. Set in 1950s New Zealand, the film has echoes of Rabbit-Proof Fence and The Magdalene Sisters in its story of abuse and exploration and colonialism but has its own voice and fresh approach. The story is about a Christian School for Incorrigible and Delinquent Girls where an abusive matron (Rima Te Wiata) drills the Bible into the mostly Māori girls sent or abandoned to the facility.
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The Mountain, Rachel House’s feature directing debut, has the spirit of backyard adventures writ large. Following three tweens on a quest to climb a New Zealand mountain shrouded in clouds, beauty, and reverence, the film is a touching ode to friendship and seemingly random yet meaningful moments. o International Film Festival (TIFF), the film opens with eleven-year-old Sam (Elizabeth Atkinson) doing pushups and karate-style moves before pictures and posters of Mount Taranaki, also known as Taranaki Maunga. “I’m pretty much a warrior woman,” she announces, revealing a bald head under her knit hat.
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We Were Dangerous, the feature directing debut from Josephine Stewart-Te Whiu, takes place in a New Zealand reform school for girls in the 1950s, reclaimed from a former leper colony. “If it can contain leprosy, it can probably manage a few girls in heat,” says a bureaucrat assigning a matron to the task. Designed for “incorrigible and delinquent girls,” the school takes in runaways, pregnant teens, and others labeled as sexual deviants, such as Lou, whose doctor father sends her there once he catches her making out with her female math tutor.
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The criminal mistreatment of indigenous populations is not limited to North America. Cousins is a superb New Zealand drama about three Maori women and their paths in life, from childhood to late middle age. Mata, Missy and Makareta are girl cousins, close in age. One of them gets completely cut off from Maori culture, one is immersed in it and one moves between Maori and white settler cultures. No coincidence that this deeply affecting film is of, for and by women, of course.
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If there was ever a film for fans who celebrate indigenous voices across the world, the new intergenerational narrative Cousins, out of New Zealand, is it. Cousins celebrates talented women of color, Māori traditions and worldview, and the value of not only family, but sisterhood and relationships uniquely found between women.
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