Once Were Warriors

A film set in Auckland, New Zealand. Beth and Jake have been married eighteen years. They have five children and live at the edge of the city in a house facing the motorway. Jake loses his job and presents it as freedom: he will answer to nobody now. In the evenings the house fills, the music goes on and it lasts until the drink runs out. One of those nights ends badly. Beth says something and is beaten. In the morning the house is tidied and nobody speaks. The children look for their own ways. The eldest boy joins a street gang and finds a belonging there; the middle son is sent to a home by a court; the daughter, Grace, writes and shows her notebook to nobody. The second line is the question of origins. Beth wants to go back to where her family came from; Jake refuses, because his own line stands low in that order. The matter at the centre is not the violence but when Beth will leave: she has stayed for years and the film shows why. The source is Alan Duff's novel. Rena Owen plays Beth, Temuera Morrison plays Jake and Mamaengaroa Kerr-Bell plays Grace. Lee Tamahori directed. It took the highest box office in New Zealand to that date and started an argument inside the country that ran for a long time. Who it is for: anyone interested in hard family drama and Maori cinema. Who it is not for: anyone who cannot take scenes of violence; the film shows domestic violence and a sexual assault directly.