‘Mārama’ Has a Bloody Good Premiere in Local Cinemas
DEGANZ member Taratoa Stappard‘s debut feature film, Mārama, is out now in Aotearoa cinemas with a stream of positive reviews following, currently holding a 100% Fresh score on Rotten Tomatoes!
The film celebrated its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival in September 2025 and has since screened at a variety of different festivals.
Set in Victorian-era North Yorkshire, the gothic horror film follows a young Māori woman named Mary fighting to reclaim her identity and connect with her whakapapa and culture while living in a foreign land. Taratoa describes the film as a Māori gothic, drawing on the horrors of colonisation in Aotearoa.
Madeline Hakaraia de Young, director of the Māoriland Film Festival, reviewed the film for RNZ, commenting,
In the days and weeks since I first saw the film […], its memories have lingered. Its images return to mind and trigger a succession of trains of thought. It’s a film you want to talk about. It disturbs not to shock, but to reckon. And in doing so, it expands Māori cinema not as spectacle, but as authority.
The film is also screening in the Māoriland Film Festival as the closing night film on 28 March 2026.
If you can’t catch it then, you can find a screening of Mārama near you here!
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