{"id":511472,"date":"2026-06-26T03:45:10","date_gmt":"2026-06-26T03:45:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/511472\/"},"modified":"2026-06-26T03:45:10","modified_gmt":"2026-06-26T03:45:10","slug":"marama-horror-movie-inspired-by-defiant-ancestors-dancing-tattoos","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/511472\/","title":{"rendered":"‘M\u0101rama’ Horror Movie Inspired by Defiant Ancestors’ Dancing & Tattoos"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tWriter-director Taratoa Stappard is an artist who tells stories of his lineage, and his latest film, \u201cM\u0101rama<\/a>,\u201d is a tribute to the ancestral women who risked it all to do the same during a much more oppressive time.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn the Victorian-era horror-revenge film, now available on VOD via Dark Sky Films and Watermelon Pictures, M\u0101rama (Ari\u0101na Osborne) is a young M\u0101ori woman compelled to travel from New Zealand to England with the promise of information about her heritage. M\u0101rama, who was separated early from her parents, jumps at the opportunity, but is soon given a strange offer by a British M\u0101ori enthusiast (Toby Stephens), who says the letter writer has died, but she might as well stay and be the governess for his daughter. Dark visions and secrets quickly come to light, as M\u0101rama grapples with her heritage in the shadow of colonizers.<\/p>\n

\n\tStappard,\u00a0born in New Zealand to a M\u0101ori mother and a British father, smiles warmly while telling stories about his great-grandmother and her identical twin sister, who were also born of an English father and a M\u0101ori mother. They were expelled from several schools by 1896 at just 16 years old, and followed their hearts to do traditional performances at a time when celebrating their people was frowned upon in society.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIt\u2019d be fair to say it was a defiant cultural gesture, a rebellious act,\u201d Stappard says.<\/p>\n

\n\tAfter getting traditional t\u0101 moko facial tattoos and acting as tour guides, the young women formed a music act called Princess Rangiriri and her 9 Maori Maids with other performers, and went on a world tour around New Zealand, Australia, America and the U.K.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cAs my mum told me these stories, I thought, \u2018What must it have been like for a woman like my great-grandmother with a t\u0101 moko on her face? To go around the world and sing and dance and entertain those people who had been and were still colonizing her people within her life?’\u201d he says. \u201cWhat was that like?\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe curiosity and drive to understand her lineage fuel M\u0101rama in the film. Given that Stappard was hoping to learn more about his own bloodline, he was able to build ideas from the experts he surrounded himself with.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI was taking any little scrap like that that I could from the M\u0101ori experts that I worked with,\u201d he says. \u201cIf someone\u2019s got a gem, I\u2019ll have it. If they\u2019re offering something, I\u2019ll take it. There\u2019s probably an embarrassing number of gems that were not my idea, because I didn\u2019t even know it was a thing. I wrote the script, I was walking backwards into it, finding out more and more and more as I could, and just magpieing ideas along the way, or taking any offerings I could get and including them. It\u2019s a privilege. I got paid a little bit to learn about a culture that I didn\u2019t really know that much about because I hadn\u2019t had any lived experience of M\u0101ori time, the M\u0101ori culture. It was a real pleasure.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tOne of the film\u2019s key sequences \u2014\u00a0in which M\u0101rama performs a ferocious M\u0101ori dance called the haka \u2014\u00a0was Stappard\u2019s idea, but grew much more impactful with the help of a traditional choreographer.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWhen I shot that, it was a nervous moment for me, because all I\u2019d done was write a line in the script: \u2018M\u0101rama performs a furious haka of defiance, insulting the audience that she\u2019s disgusted with,\u2019 something like that,\u201d he says. \u201cBut we had to compose a haka, because you can\u2019t just appropriate any old haka from the tribe. It was, for me, the most challenging part of the shoot, because we had the extras, costumes, and production was anxious that we would get it all because we couldn\u2019t go over because we\u2019ve got too many people. It was a one-shot number, no movement, nothing. But I had never seen [Osborne] do it, because it wasn\u2019t in my wheelhouse to inform her about how to do the haka. She\u2019d worked on it with M\u0101ori consultant Ngahuia Koppa: Her language, her pronunciation, her accent, and how she might hold herself, but especially the choreography and the movement of the haka. When it happened, it was the first time I\u2019d seen it. The first take, I was literally weeping. I said, \u2018I have no notes. It was beautiful.’\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tDespite the beauty of the dance, the pair asked for a second take, which was even more of a powerhouse performance. Stappard was stunned when he learned of the subtle but critical change that took place.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIt was even better the second time, and we wrapped,\u201d he says. \u201cI had to ask, of course, \u2018What the fuck did you tell Ari\u0101na? What was your note?\u2019 She said, \u2018Oh, nothing major. I just reminded her to weaponize her dress.’\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cM\u0101rama\u201d ended up both a critical darling and festival hit, with its Toronto International Film Festival world premiere in September leading to enthusiastic screenings around the world, from New Orleans\u2019 horror-focused Overlook Film Festival<\/a> to the Zurich Film Festival.<\/p>\n

\n\tYet Stappard\u2019s journey with his characters and the culture is just beginning, as he says \u201cM\u0101rama\u201d is the first of a trilogy. Up next is \u201cAnahira,\u201d followed by \u201cTaumanu,\u201d based on a short film he made in 2022 that was funded by TV New Zealand. His guiding light on the trio of films is M\u0101ori terms that speak to the tonal direction.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cAny filmmaker who says they don\u2019t look at their Letterboxd reviews is bullshit. I do, right? I look at all the things,\u201d he says. \u201cThe ones that I love are the ones that go, \u2018This film\u2019s too short. I wanna know more! What happened?\u2019 Funny you should mention, because it\u2019s the beginning of a trilogy. There are three concepts, or three M\u0101ori words, that I lean into: Whakapapa is lineage, wh\u0101nau is family, and utu is vengeance.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tWatch the \u201cM\u0101rama\u201d trailer below.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Writer-director Taratoa Stappard is an artist who tells stories of his lineage, and his latest film, \u201cM\u0101rama,\u201d is…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":511473,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[146,85,46,234730,230528],"class_list":["post-511472","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-entertainment","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-mu0101rama","tag-overlook-film-festival"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/511472","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=511472"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/511472\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/511473"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=511472"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=511472"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=511472"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}