Fresh from Sundance and the Berlinale – Sweet As & Gush join MFF2023
From March 15 – 19 2023, Māoriland Film Festival (MFF) will present its largest programme yet in celebration of the 10th year of the festival. Today the festival announces the inclusion of three additional feature films, bringing the total number of films and interactive works in the programme to 148.
Sweet As is the debut feature film from Nyul Nyul, Yawuru filmmaker Jub Clerc. It comes to Māoriland Film Festival from the Berlinale, following an international festival run including Toronto International Festival (International premiere), Hawaii International Film Festival and Melbourne International Film Festival (premiere).
Based on Jub’s own experiences, and set in remote Pilbara country in Western Australia, Sweet As follows troubled 16 year old Indigenous girl, Murra, who finds herself abandoned after an explosive incident with her addict mother. On the cusp of being lost in the child protection system, an unusual lifeline is thrown her way by her uncle Ian, the local cop, in the form of a unique photo safari. Before Murra knows it, she is careening down a dusty highway with a minibus full of at-risk teens and two charismatic team leaders. Will this be the lifeline Murra needs or the catalyst for her demise?
Sweet As is an uplifting coming-of-age road movie about unconventional friendships, first crushes and finding who you are on the road less travelled.
Pieced together from a decade’s worth of personal archives, Sundance Institute 2022 Merata Mita Fellow, Fox Maxy’s Gush delivers a kaleidoscopic look at horror and survival. The experimental film which premiered at Sundance Film Festival in January, weaves through a stream-of-consciousness meditation on the impact of sexual violence and healing through collective joy.
At first, it is a fiery manifesto on the sovereignty of land and the body, and then an ode to the bonds of friendship before morphing into a celebration of what it means to endure. Gush is a work defiantly without limits, refusing to be categorized.
After building a body of work that established her as an artist to watch, Maxy’s feature film debut is a continuation of her signature freestyle and abundant approach to the medium. Gush blends an intimate collage of personal footage and fixations that – true to its director’s form – creates its own cinematic language. It’s a film that speaks to viewers on its own terms and demonstrates the radical possibilities of filmmaking.
From Aotearoa, the final feature film to join the MFF programme for 2023 is action, drama film MURU. Inspired by actual events, MURU is the story of a local Police Sergeant ‘Taffy’ Tāwharau (Cliff Curtis), who must choose between duty to his badge or his people, when the Government invoke antiterrorism powers to launch an armed raid on Taffy’s remote Urewera community, on a school day.
Directed by Tearepa Kahi and starring Cliff Curtis, Jay Ryan, Manu Bennett, Tame Iti and Simone Kessell, Muru’s gripping action drama is not a re-creation, but a response to the 2007 Tūhoe raids.
MFF2023 opens in Ōtaki on March 15 with spectacular Hawaiian film Ka Pō, a powerful drama that takes place in the beautiful, rugged wildness of Kauai, about a young woman who finds herself again after escaping an abusive relationship and meth addiction.
For the tenth anniversary, MFF will present 148 short and feature films from 150 Indigenous Nations across five days (15th – 19th March 2023) in Ōtaki. Tickets are on sale now at iticket.co.nz