Film helps to expose our national tragedy

Ma- ui’s Hook (E, 92 mins) Directed by Paora Joseph ★★★★★

A few years ago, writer/director Paora Joseph’s Tatarakihi: The Children of Parihaka was one of the absolute gems of the New Zealand International Film Festival.

The film interwove the story of the invasion of the community at Parihaka with a present day road trip taken by some of the descendants of that community from the Taranaki to Otago, and the site of the prison that held the prophets Te Whiti and Tohu.

It was a gentle, lyrical and compassionate film with a spine like a taiaha. I didn’t see anything that moved and intrigued me as much in that festival.

Psychologist and film-maker Joseph is one of the deftest documentary makers working in Aotearoa. There’s nothing soft or naive about Joseph’s approach, but his films are exercises in applied compassion and insight.

Ma¯ ui’s Hook finds Joseph in horribly familiar territory, gently unpacking the stories of five whanau who have lost a family member to suicide.

The hook of the title is a hikoi that begins in the Taranaki, travelling south to Whanganui and then up the motu all the way to Cape Reinga/Te Rerenga Wairua. Stopping along the way to meet, talk and listen to those who New Zealand’s national tragedy has touched.

Woven into the journey is a lightly played recreation of one story, lending Ma¯ ui’s Hook a narrative thread that carries us through even as the content of the documentary is breaking our hearts.

Last year, New Zealand lost 606 people to suicide. Our teen suicide rate is the worst in the developed world. Suicide claims far more lives than our shameful road toll. It is the equivalent of a Pike River disaster happening every 17 days. Men and Ma¯ ori are horribly overrepresented in the statistics.

Paora Joseph has made a film that shows us tragedy from the inside out. There are no white-coated experts, no outsider opinions and no easy answers. But Ma- ui’s Hook is made with aroha, and it told me more about a facet of this beautiful, perverse country than any other film has in years. Go and see it.

Ma- ui’s Hook will screen as part of this year’s New Zealand International Film Festival.

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