Millie, an architecture student from Wellington, New Zealand, has landed a competitive internship with a prestigious architecture firm in New York City. Her friends, family and professors have proudly bid her farewell as she takes this next step in her career. With her life in Wellington now on hold, all Millie has to do next …
For nearly a century, Dame Whina Cooper’s voice never stopped asserting the rights of her people – land rights, women’s rights, education rights – and striving for unity between Māori and Pākehā (New Zealand Europeans). In 1975, Whina (Rena Owen), frail but still sharp as a knife, is roused to unite Māori to fight not …
Three decades ago, there were no waka hourua (Māori watercraft), no ocean going waka/canoes and no surviving knowledge of celestial navigation in Aotearoa/New Zealand. Oral history and carved artifacts were all that remained of the ancestral Pacific voyagers. Sir Hekenukumai ‘Hek’ Puhipi Busby has helmed this renaissance in Aotearoa/New Zealand. He reached out across the …
Conceived as a cinematic response to the 250th anniversary of James Cook’s arrival in this region, WE ARE STILL HERE is a poetic and powerful statement of resistance and survival. Through eight heroic protagonists, the film traverses 1000 years exploring stories of kinship, loss, grief and resilience. It begins with a stunning animation set in …
KĀINGA concludes the trilogy of anthology films from New Zealand producing duo Kerry Warkia and Kiel McNaughton (WARU, VAI) under the production support of NZ On Air and the New Zealand Film Commission. Eight stories by eight Asian female filmmakers explore the immigrant experience of eight Asian women in Aotearoa. Writers and directors from Māori-Chinese …
In the mountains of Kauai, a drug addicted native Hawaiian woman, Nanea, 22, is living with her troubled boyfriend, Eli. Estranged from her father, and on the night of her mother’s funeral, Nanea reaches a breaking point and destroys Eli’s possessions, sending him into a bitter rage. Nanea flees into the surrounding forest, escaping into …
With aloha, HIFF acknowledges its occupation of ancestral, traditional and contemporary lands of the Native Hawaiian people, the Kānaka Maoli.
With gratitude, we honor the ʻāina itself and the generations who steward it.
