
Flicks, Liam Maguren
Chances are, you’ve never witnessed anything like Waru. This isn’t because of its multi-narrative one-shot structure - comparable to 2005’s Nine Lives - and the actual reason for Waru’s uniqueness isn’t a positive one. With only two feature films credited to female Māori directors, Merata Mita's Mauri and Ramai Hayward's To Love a Māori, the voices of Aotearoa’s native women haven’t been heard enough in cinema. With Waru, the film's eight directors deliver an emotional shout into that silence, and it carries the spread and whaea power of a shotgun.
Full review