Doc Edge Unveils Full Programme For Landmark 20th Anniversary Festival
This milestone edition features an unmissable and genre-defying line-up of 49 feature films, 29 short films, and 12 immersive projects that expose, educate, and entertain. Spanning urgent global issues to powerful local voices, the festival runs from 25 June to 24 August, bringing thought-provoking, inspiring stories to Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch, and nationwide via the Virtual Cinema.
This year's festival boasts 32 world premieres and 20 international premieres, tackling themes of community, resilience, and the universal power of human connection. These films are bold, raw, and resonant—reflecting the festival's 20-year legacy of fearless storytelling.
Joining the already announced premiere films are these standout titles:
MANA MOANA MANA TANGATA
Dirs. Toby Mills, Julian Arahanga | New Zealand | 90 mins | 2025 | World Premiere
In this compelling film, the battle to save Māori fishing rights unfolds as a powerful tale of resilience and determination.
NO TEARS ON THE FIELD
Dir. Lisa Burd | New Zealand | 2025 | 90 min | World Premiere
Set in Taranaki, the film follows four young women chasing big rugby dreams, capturing the grit, heart, and camaraderie of grassroots women's sport.
THREE DAYS IN FEBRUARY
Dir. Serena Stevenson | New Zealand | 74 min | 2025 | World Premiere
Set against the vibrant backdrop of the Splore festival, this is a cinematic celebration of human connection through an intimate and often playful lens.
A QUIET LOVE
Dir. Garry Keane | Ireland | 2025 | 95 min | World Premiere
Three Deaf couples share the stories of how they met and fell in love. Together, these cinematic love letters weave a rich tapestry of Deaf experience over a period of 70 years.
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Newsroom
32 minutes ago
- Newsroom
Authors call out Stanford's ‘racism'
Authors and key figures in New Zealand publishing have slammed government minister Erica Stanford's controversial decision to remove words in te reo Māori in new additions to a series of books used to teach five-year-olds to read. As reported by Radio New Zealand, a ministry document showed Stanford decided on the near-ban last October because she was worried five-year-olds would be confused by Māori words in the Education Ministry's Ready to Read Phonics Plus series. ReadingRoom reached out to 10 writers, publishers and booksellers for comment. Their response was not unanimous. Some were cautious in their replies, and some pointed to other, literacy-adjacent issues they felt were more important than the heat generated by an apparent culture war. But the majority felt plain disgusted. Catherine Chidgey has twice won the national fiction prize (The Wish Child in 2017, The Axeman's Carnival in 2023) and her latest novel The Book of Guilt has topped the number 1 position at the NielsenIQ BookScan bestseller chart for 14 weeks. She said, 'I'm appalled by Minister Stanford's decision to strip Māori words from children's books – a move cloaked in the spurious claim that it impedes English literacy, but reeking of racism and dragging us back to the 1950s. My own daughter has had no trouble reading and pronouncing both Māori and English in the same text, and this retrograde step is as needless as it is shameful.' Steph Matuku was a finalist at this week's New Zealand Book Awards for Children and Young Adults for her YA novel Migration, a dystopian space odyssey set 3,000 years into our possible future. She said, 'You know that cartoon with the pirate telling the mermaid not to play the thing because he doesn't like it? And she glares at him and says, 'I WILL FUCKING INCREASE THE FUCKING THING!' Yeah, well, I am increasing the reo Māori thing in all my books, so there. Toitū te Tiriti.' A striking feature of the children's book awards was the number of books which made significant use of te reo Maori. The judges included Stacy Gregg, who graduated Level 6 Aupikitanga at Te Wānanga o Aotearoa last year, and has sold over a million copies worldwide of her middle-grade fiction. She won the supreme award at the 2024 awards for her novel about growing up in Ngāruawāhia, Nine Girls, which has a five-page glossary at the front of Māori words in the text. She said, 'This Government made it quite clear from the day they took power and prioritised deleting all signage in te reo as the first thing on their to-do list that they are focused on elimination of the Māori language as a cultural powerplay. At every opportunity they have undermined the use of te reo and ignored their Treaty partner obligations. 'What I find astonishing is the sass of Erica Stanford's racism – I mean she's just so blatant with it. I guess that's what growing up on the North Shore does to you.' Rachael King is also a successful middle-grade writer. She referred ReadingRoom to her comments on Instagram: 'In New Zealand many Māori words are part of our lexicon and need to be taught just as much as English words FFS.' Shilo Kino has written fiction for kids and adults; her 2024 debut novel All That We Know was inspired by Māori and Pasifika students who held an Auckland schoolgirl to account for posing in blackface in a Snapchat photo. She said, 'Can I echo the words of Te Akatea, the Māori Principals' Association, associate president Bruce Jepson? 'It's an act of racism. It's a determined act to recolonise our education system, and it sends a very dangerous message and is immensely harmful and it's utterly shameful.' 'I would add that this is another blatant, aggressive, and ongoing attack on te reo Māori by the government. It is the deliberate and ongoing erasure of te reo Māori. When does it end?' She emailed again 13 minutes later, and wrote, 'Also for more than 1,000 years, the various dialects of te reo Māori were the only language spoken in Aotearoa. It took less than 100 years for the almost erasure of te reo Māori. So many of our elders, activists, pioneers fought for te reo Māori to thrive today, so it is more than infuriating to think the Government can get away with casually erasing te reo from all aspects of life, and in particular the most important, education.' ReadingRoom also contacted a prominent publisher who was happy to be named, objected to the education minister's decision, but their most expressive quote was the first thing they said and was off the record: 'It's madness.' Helen Wardsworth, co-owner of one of the most beautiful bookstores in New Zealand, Dorothy Butler Childrens Books in Jervois Rd, Auckland, also objected—but felt that it distracted from another issue. She said, 'We're not in favour of the change but would rather be talking about the fact that only 30% of schools have libraries and that lots of experienced Resource teachers of literacy and Māori will be losing their jobs soon.' The attack on libraries was also of chief concern to the great New Zealand novelist Lloyd Jones. He said, 'I don't think it is the end of the world. 'There may be sound pedagogical reasons for separating out Maori and English vowel sounds at that point of a child's learning. However, in my experience, we make a mistake when we under-estimate a child's capacity. Set the bar low and a child won't disappoint you. Set the bar high and the same child won't disappoint you (with some exceptions, those with learning disabilities etc…). 'For a true crisis, shift your eyes to Gaza, where the world and its most useless agency the UN looks on helplessly as a captive population is systematically starved to death. 'For a local crisis, look at the outrageous amount of money spent on linking Archives and the National Library by some needless and pointless internal route. Millions that could have been spent making the national library look like – a National Library.' Nicola Legat, publisher at Massey University Press and chair of the the New Zealand Book Awards Trust, distanced herself from the furore. She said, 'I'm not at all an expert on structured literacy and was interested to hear the views of various reading experts. Perhaps everyone has got a bit overexcited and has raced to conclusions, but that's the climate we are in and that has been created: tempers are hot and passions are inflamed and everything, even early readers, have become part of a culture war.' Final word to one of the guv'nors of New Zealand books for kids, David Hill. His first teenage novel, See Ya, Simon (1992), is a YA classic. He has published more than 50 titles over four decades and received the Prime Minister's Award for Literary Achievement in Fiction. He said, 'Erica is a well-meaning pupil who tries hard in class. 'Unfortunately, her progress is currently impeded by an inability to grasp certain concepts. These include: '1. Maori is one of Aotearoa New Zealand's official languages. It seems perverse to exclude it from any resource aimed at developing the language skills of young New Zealanders. '2. In the new, miraculous world of reading skills that places so much emphasis on phonics, it's worth noting that Maori words are spelt more phonetically than many English equivalents. (Try 'arero' and 'waka' against 'tongue' and 'yacht'.) '3. Knowledge of more than one language is universally accepted as enhancing memory, cognitive abilities and cultural understanding. 'If Erica pays attention to these and related issues, there remains a good chance that her next report card will be more positive.'
NZ Herald
2 days ago
- NZ Herald
Toi Tū Toi Ora reframed: Doco reveals Auckland Art Gallery politics of landmark Māori exhibition
The artists are all here tonight. The always-too-small foyer of SkyCity Theatre is bursting with a sold-out crowd for the premiere of Toi Tū: Visual Sovereignty, Chelsea Winstanley's documentary about what happened five years ago and a kilometre away at Auckland City Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki. There had been a crowd back in 2020, too, with many of the same people in it, for the opening of Toi Tū Toi Ora, which was not only the largest show in the gallery's history, but also the largest exhibition of contemporary Māori art there had ever been. Yet, amid the celebration, there was a whisper that something had gone wrong, that even as Toi Tū opened its doors, its curator, Nigel Borell, had resigned. A cover story in the NZ Herald's Canvas magazine a few weeks later finally told the public what the artists knew – that Borell and the gallery's director, Kirsten Lacy, had fallen out over what he described as 'different ways of viewing aspirations for Māori'. Winstanley had been on the inside of it all, filming what she had imagined would be a celebratory film that would accompany Toi Tū as it toured internationally. The show never toured, and she wound up with a different story to tell. Curator Nigel Borell: 'You have a moment to make some change.' Photo / Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki This is an audience that knows the story. It's also an extraordinarily engaged crowd. The next 100 minutes are dotted with swirls of applause, knowing laughter and even cheers as one artist or another comes up in the tale. What had originally seemed like an obstacle to the production – the pandemic – turned out to be something of a gift. The lockdown Zoom meetings with Borell, the gallery's longstanding artists' advisory board Haerewa, and Lacy and the gallery's senior management, all tiled across the screen, are rich documents in retrospect. There are murmurs and an audible gasp when Lacy, an Australian appointed to run the gallery in 2019, just as Borell's five-year dream for the exhibition was becoming a reality, is shown announcing her intention to go off on her own to conduct 'informal meet and greets' with iwi about how they would like to engage with the exhibition – effectively over the heads of Borell and Haerewa. Borell, sitting at home on Zoom, simply gets up and leaves the frame, to laughter from the audience. 'She's got to go with someone,' says painter and Haerewa's chair and founding member Elizabeth Ellis at a follow-up hui without Lacy. 'She's going to be discussing Māori stuff. We can't send her off, this young Australian woman, to carry our message.' Ellis and five other Haerewa members would eventually follow Borell in resigning. The film turns on an understanding of mana – translated on screen as 'authority to lead' – that will be familiar to many New Zealanders, but was not evident to Lacy. The gallery director arrived with an admirable record of working with indigenous artists in Australia but, it seems, an incomplete sense of the moment she was entering here. 'You have a moment to make some change,' says Borell at one point in the film. 'And if you don't use it in that way, then you're just taking up space.' Winstanley has gone out of her way not to be inflammatory, to the extent that some viewers could even wonder what all the fuss was about. She's after a teachable moment rather than a pile-on. Former Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki director Kirsten Lacy. Photo / Auckland City Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki 'I don't think she's a villain,' Winstanley says of Lacy the following morning. 'I think she is someone who … She's not Māori, she doesn't have the experience of having lived in this country, she doesn't understand or know that, and I think that's what comes across. And there's an opportunity, I think, for people in these positions. You can do what the beautiful Dr Maya Angelou says: 'Do the best you can until you know better – and when you know better, do better.'' Winstanley's original, more celebratory film survives through the twists of the story. We're taken straight from a troubled Zoom meeting to Reuben Paterson working out the lighting for Guide Kaiārahi, the crystalline waka taua that was Toi Tū Toi Ora's most prominent commissioned work, by virtue of its position at the gallery entrance. As commissions from Shane Cotton and Mataaho Collective take shape, we get a glimpse of the artists as purposeful engineers. The film, also commissioned by the gallery, provides an enriching context for the exhibition that will make viewers wish for a chance to see the art again with it all in mind. Indeed, that was the role it would have played had the exhibition toured as planned. Those plans were let go after Borell's departure – but the artists travelled even if the show did not. Eight New Zealand artists were invited to present at the Venice Biennale last year; all were Māori and all had been part of Toi Tū Toi Ora. An investment from the barrister Kahungunu Barron-Afeaki allowed Winstanley to fly there to capture the event, where Mataaho Collective claimed the Biennale's Golden Lion prize. Mataaho Collective won the Golden Lion award at the 60th Venice Biennale for their installation Takapau. Photo / Creative NZ Although Toi Tū Toi Ora had made its case by breaking gallery attendance records – at least since the return of the landmark Te Māori exhibition from New York in 1987, to which it is consciously connected in the film – following the story to Venice meant, says Winstanley, that 'we were able to truly celebrate what having that kind of sovereignty meant and that's what I'd envisioned in the beginning. Because if the whole point of Toi Tū Toi Ora was to enable our art to live and thrive through a Māori lens, it didn't feel like it was able to do that fully, opening the way it did and with what happened.' Lacy, who resigned in April and left in June, saw a rough cut of the film before she departed. By that time, she had received the recommendations of an independent review of the gallery's relationship with Māori and appointed Ngāti Whātua Ōrākei chief executive Tom Irvine as her deputy director. The move had the effect of further stirring debate about Lacy's personal cultivation of mana whenua at the expense of the mana of Haerewa. Ngāti Whātua seems like a missing voice in the film. Irvine is currently acting director. Whoever is permanently appointed to the role will find plenty to think about and much to respond to in Toi Tū: Visual Sovereignty. A day after the premiere, the friends I went with were still exchanging messages about what it meant. Perhaps that's what teachable moments are meant to do. After selling out its screenings at the Auckland leg of the NZ International Film Festival, Toi Tū: Visual Sovereignty has screenings in Wellington (Aug 17, 23), Dunedin (Aug 24) and Christchurch (Aug 17, 21), see for more. Plans are underway for screenings beyond the festival. To request a screening go to Director Chelsea Winstanley: 'I'm not putting words in people's mouths.' Photo / Supplied Things Fall Apart Chelsea Winstanley on filming in a crisis. For film-maker Chelsea Winstanley, Toi Tū: Visual Sovereignty represents her most serious film in years. Her recent producer duties have been on former husband Taika Waititi's Oscar-winning Jojo Rabbit and before that What We Do in the Shadows and giving Disney's animated hits te reo makeovers. But TT:VS is also her debut feature as a director. Her career began with directing Whakangahau, a documentary short about cousins from her Paparoa marae running a tourism venture. It was her 2003 graduating film from the Auckland University of Technology and won a Media Peace Award. Her feature directing debut also focuses on another relation with Ngāti Ranginui iwi roots – Nigel Borell. Toi Tū: Visual Sovereignty started out of conversations she had with Borell in the years running up to the exhibition about what it took to stage an event of its size and ambition. When you spoke at the premiere, you seemed quite nervous about how the film would be received. For a few reasons, I suppose. This is my directorial debut – I've done enough producing in my life – and you're putting your film out into the world, it's all on you this time. But not only that, it's the community that I love the most. You love them so dearly that you just want to do right by them. Was there a distinct point where you knew that the story was going to be different from what you had thought it would be? Obviously, when Nigel had to make that decision, it really did change then. I was going to follow the whole exhibition and the background to it, because I don't think we ever really understand what goes into putting on something like that. I thought it was going to travel overseas, because that's what I was told. I was like, 'Wow, this is going to be amazing, a celebration from beginning to end.' And then when he made that decision, for himself, I had to go, 'Oh, all right, I have to now rethink how it's going to happen.' Other things were happening, too – everyone went through Covid. Even at that point, I was like, 'Oh, my god, is this show even going to come to fruition?' That was actually a moment, too. A small selection of the art shown as part of Toi Tū Toi Ora (clockwise, from left): Lisa Reihana, Ihi, 2020; Israel Tangaroa Birch Ara-i-te-Uru, 2011; Aimee Ratana, Potiki Series, 2005; and Shane Cotton, Te Puawai, 2020. Photos / Supplied What was the response after the screening for Kirsten Lacy and the gallery staff? Was there a response? It's challenging for anybody to have to observe themselves. But remember, when they watched that edit, it's not like it was a big surprise what happened there, the story was already out. It's about how you have to reflect on your position, so that was up to them. And they knew that I had final cut anyway, and I'm not putting words in people's mouths or anything like that. While I watched the film, I did find myself thinking I'd like to go and see the exhibition again, having absorbed all this context. Yeah, of course, and that's the wonderful thing for people who were fortunate enough to see the show. A lot of people said to me afterwards that it brought back so many memories, both people who were working there and those who had gone to the show and wanted to see it again. And I think, for us as a country, we need to have spaces where we can just see that beautiful, contemporary art all the time, not just these once in 20-year timeframes.
NZ Herald
2 days ago
- NZ Herald
Paaka Davis rejects $50k gambling deal on ethics because mana is more important than money
The many sides of social media influencer Paaka Davis. Montage / Paul Slater. Māori social media personality Paaka Davis turned down a $50,000 offer to promote online gambling stating his mana is more important than money. With almost 500,000 followers on social media, Davis told the Herald his principles are worth more than cash. 'There have been a lot of opportunities that I
