Te Rua

An angry, passionate, albeit stylistically flawed, film about the the theft by cultural institutions of objects sacred to indigenous peoples. A museum in Berlin refuses to return carvings which were stolen from a Maori tribe one hundred years earlier. Cutting between Berlin, where a highly charged political debate over the return of indigenous art is raging; and a remote Maori community in rural New Zealand, the film focuses on the different strategies of a young performance poet and his wealthy lawyer uncle, both from the Uritoto tribe, to restore the carvings to their people. While the older man attempts to work within the system to convince the museum’s director to return the sacred objects, the younger man resorts to radical action in Berlin. Meanwhile the elderly matriarch of the tribe begins a hunger strike in the marae meeting house that she vows to continue until the mission of returning the carvings to their rightful guardians is accomplished. Cast includes Wi Kuki Kaa, Gunter Meisner, Nissie Herewini, Matiu Mareikura, Tilly Reedy, Peter Kaa.