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New Zealand is set to announce a first-of-its-kind Indigenous co-production initiative at the Toronto Film Festival, New Zealand Film Commission CEO Annie Murray tells Variety.
The pact will bring together Māori filmmakers from New Zealand, Aboriginal filmmakers from Australia and Indigenous Canadian filmmakers in a program of collaborative storytelling that none of the three countries could mount alone.
“They’re not beginning filmmakers, these are mid-career filmmakers who will collaborate together on stories, working in wānanga, we call them, but very intensive workshops together in each country,” Murray says.
The announcement is expected on Saturday, the same day NZFC head of funding Ainsley Gardiner — a filmmaker and Oscar nominee who served as a co-producer on the first Indigenous Canada-New Zealand co-production, “Night Raiders” (2021) — participates in the From Pitch to Partner: Global Co-Production Showcase alongside reps from Telefilm Canada and Eurimages.
For Murray, the initiative reflects a clear creative principle. “The real base of successful co-production is a shared creative purpose,” she says. “A strong base of mutual trust, creative alignment — it’s about creating something together that neither party could do on their own.”
New Zealand arrives at TIFF with three projects spanning a wide range of scale and approach. Debut feature “God Bless You, Mr. Kopu,” from filmmaker Alex Liu, is presented by Murray as evidence of a new generation of confident, culturally specific New Zealand voices. “What it gives you is a really unique take on modern New Zealand through a cultural lens,” she says. “It shows you very clearly on screen how super diverse New Zealand is culturally.”
“Man of Valor,” directed by Tearepa Kahi and screening as part of TIFF: The Market, follows Māori World War II hero Sgt. Haane during the Battle of Takrouna in Tunisia. Murray points to the film’s authenticity as the source of its power. “It works because it’s authentic,” she says, “and authenticity resonates locally and internationally.”
The third project, “Tenzing,“ which tells the story of how Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay first reached the summit of Mount Everest, represents the international co-production end of the spectrum, produced through New Zealand’s screen production rebate and filmed across multiple countries.
Across all three, Murray sees a common thread: the projects most likely to travel are those most confident in their point of origin. “The strongest stories come from a cultural confidence and a cultural pride,” she says, “and you find that in New Zealand.”
On the policy front, NZFC’s recent changes to the New Zealand Screen Production Rebate are generating early traction. The minimum qualifying spend threshold for the 20% cash rebate was reduced from NZ$15 million ($8.7 million) to NZ$4 million ($2.3 million) — opening the incentive to independent and mid-budget productions that had previously found New Zealand out of reach. Murray says the first qualifying project under the new settings has already been secured, with others in advanced consideration.
“It’s creating opportunities, too, for our actors,” she says. “These are films in the kind of anything from $15 million to $30 million U.S. dollars that wouldn’t have the budget to bring everybody in with them that the bigger-budget productions can do, so they are looking to source locally.”
Murray frames New Zealand’s broader international appeal in terms that go beyond logistics and locations. “We have a way of doing business that is very inclusive, and celebrates diversity, and a warmth that makes it a really, really fantastic place to make creative works,” she says. “They always want to come back to do more.”
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