‘Kōkā’ Wins the NETPAC Award at HIFF

Local feature, Kōkā, edited by DEGANZ member Te Rurehe Paki, won the 2025 Network for the Promotion of Asian-Pacific Cinema (NETPAC) Award at the 45th annual Hawai’i International Film Festival (HIFF) in late October. Writer/Director Kath Akuhata-Brown and Producer Verity Mackintosh were there in person to accept the award at the private ceremony held in Helekulani.

NETPAC is an international not-for-profit organisation dedicated to promoting Asian and Pacific film globally. As part of their work, they sponsor the NETPAC Award at various film festivals worldwide to promote Asian and Pacific cinema by spotlighting exceptional works and discovering new talent.

The jury selected Kōkā for the award, commenting on the film’s “magical and moving intergenerational journey of healing and reconciliation through language, culture and community.”

Under the celestial guidance of Matariki, the film follows Māori elder Hamo and local delinquent Jo, who form an unlikely bond on a road trip. As they confront past traumas and each face their demons, their shared path becomes a journey of healing, community and reconciliation.

Congratulations to Te Rurehe and the entire team!

 

Last updated on 19 November 2025

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DEGANZ Members Scoop Up Awards at NZ Web Fest

DEGANZ members scooped up a multitude of awards at the 2025 NZ Web Fest Awards on Sunday, 23 November. This year, 15 projects from members were selected, with 12 of them nominated for awards in writing, directing, editing and more.

Congratulations to the award nominees and winners!

NZ Short Fiction Films

Constance

Writer/Director: Jayde Hudson

Planet 13

Writer, Director & Editor: Joe Murdie

 

NZ Factual Series

d8talk

Best Concept

Director: Joe Canham

Home Education

Best Editing

Director, DOP, and Editor: Chris Pryor

K’ Rd Chronicles

Best NZ Factual Series and Best Host (Six)

Editor: Brendon Chan

Sight Unseen

Best Concept

Directors: Julie Zhu & Sheldene Seth

 

NZ Narrative Series

Camp Be Better

Best Directing and Best Editing

Co-director: Chye-Ling Huang

Literally Dead

Best NZ Narrative Series, Best Cinematography (Adum Luxton), and Best Performance (Kirana Asmarani)

Directors: Victoria Boult and Gwen Lin

Editor: Brendon Chan

The Sender

Best Ensemble and Best Score

Director: Liv McClymont

Editor: Ben Chesters

 

Last updated on 19 November 2025

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Tansley’s ‘Tenor: My Name is Pati’ Coming to Cinemas in 2026

DEGANZ board member and award-winning filmmaker, Rebecca Tansley‘s latest feature documentary, Tenor: My Name is Pati, is coming to cinemas in March 2026.

The documentary charts the against-the-odds journey of Pene and Amitai, two of the world’s leading opera singers, from their original family home in Samoa and childhood in South Auckland through to the most revered opera stages in the world. Well-known to Kiwi audiences as part of the beloved trio Sol3 Mio, Pene and Amitai’s story is one of music, family, faith, and determination. Filmed across seven countries, the film takes audiences behind the curtain at some of the world’s greatest opera houses and captures rare, tender moments with the brothers and their family.

Bursting with humour, heart and soaring performances, the film reveals the resilience born of adversity, the richness of family and culture, and the rewards that come from following an unlikely dream.

Check the trailer out below and keep an eye out for screening announcements in the new year!

 

Last updated on 19 November 2025

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DEGANZ Watch List: Māori Stories on the Big and Small Screen

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This week’s DEGANZ Watch List features Māori stories on both the big and small screen.

While local drama web series Ahikāroa is heating up with its seventh season, new docuseries, Earth Oven with Temuera Morrison, digs deep to explore how indigenous cultures from around the globe have used thermal cooking. Meanwhile, if you missed the chance to see Chelsea Winstanley’s directorial debut, TOITŪ: Visual Sovereignty, at this year’s Whānau Mārama NZIFF, you can catch it in cinemas across the mōtu now.

Find out more about how DEGANZ members are involved below!

 

Ahikāroa

Bilingual Drama Web Series

Shadow Director: Te Waiarangi Ratana

Co-Editor: Jack Woon

Storyliners: Onehou Strickland and Te Waiarangi Ratana

Ahikāroa is back for its seventh season, picking up on all the drama from last season’s cliffhanger. Check out the latest episodes following the lives of urban-based rangatahi in Aotearoa.

 

Earth Oven with Temuera Morrison

Documentary Series

Editor: Ben Wildish

Director of Photography: Mike Jonathan

Temuera Morrison is hungry, and he’s using his favourite kai as a vehicle to head off on a globe-trotting adventure. Tem will visit indigenous communities from all around the world to uncover how earth ovens have shaped their cultures.

 

TOITŪ: Visual Sovereignty

Documentary Feature

Editors: Cushla Dillon, Brendon Chan, and Huhana Ruri-Panapa

Director of Photography: Mike Jonathan

TOITŪ: Visual Sovereignty, the debut directorial feature from Academy Award-nominated producer Chelsea Winstanley, goes behind the scenes of the largest Māori art exhibition in Aotearoa New Zealand’s history. Following curator Nigel Borell’s vision for Toi Tū Toi Ora: Contemporary Māori Art, the film captures both its record-breaking success and the behind-the-scenes conflicts that arise when Indigenous sovereignty challenges institutional power. Featuring rare access and the voices of celebrated artists such as Shane Cotton, Emily Karaka, Taika Waititi, Brett Graham, Ngahina Hohaia, the Mataaho Collective and Reuben Paterson, this is a powerful portrait of cultural resilience and authorship.

TOITŪ: Visual Sovereignty is out in local cinemas now! Find a screening near you here.

 

Last updated on 26 November 2025

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People Have the Power

View from the Top banner

The Directors and Editors Guild of Aotearoa New Zealand is both a guild and a union. We’ve been a union since 2019. The NZ Writers Guild started out as a union in 1976 and Equity New Zealand came into existence as a union in 1944. We three are the unions in New Zealand’s screen sector, and are affiliated to the New Zealand Council of Trade Unions (NZCTU).

I attended my first NZCTU biennial conference last week. One of the biggest impressions left on me from the conference is that unions are bastions of democracy. We are large and small, democratic, membership-based organisations that foster active participation. We give workers a collective voice in public policy discussions, strengthening democracy at both the workplace and societal levels while striving for workers’ rights.

So much of my work at the guild, and my colleagues at the other guilds and associations, is taken up representing you to funding bodies, government ministers and ministries, other organisations, companies and individuals. We work to make your working world better.

Another lasting impression from the conference was the unity that all unions have in pursuing the best for their members, many of whom are in a less fortunate space than those of us in screen.

DEGANZ, NZWG and Equity NZ, joined by SIGANZ and SMSG, are united in their efforts to get collective bargaining underway under the Screen Industry Workers Act.

At our Collective Power Workshop last weekend, explaining what the Screen Industry Workers Act is all about, it was encouraging to see screen workers from a variety of disciplines in attendance. They were actively engaged in learning what SIWA can do for them and how it can help to bring our industry onto a truly professional footing, on par with developed nations elsewhere. Which is why it is so disappointing that we have disunity in our sector over SIWA. All at a time when so many voices are calling for us to be united to confront the challenges facing us in screen.

I encourage all of you to watch the Choir! Choir! Choir! rendition with Patti Smith of her song ‘People Have The Power’ on YouTube. These lyrics particularly resonate:

that the people have the power
to redeem the work of fools
upon the meek the graces shower
it’s decreed the people rule

For all of you who seek a more professional New Zealand screen industry that truly embraces collaboration, wellbeing and equity, it’s time, as Patti Smith so eloquently says at the end of the performance, to…

Use your voice!

 

Tui Ruwhiu
Executive Director

Last updated on 6 November 2025

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