Support Aotearoas Youngest Film Directors

Bub is a short film about a small boy who arrives home from kura to find his Nan - his whole world - gone. It was filmed in January 2019 in Õtaki at the Māoriland Hub on no budget with a lot of love and support. We're now really excited to be able to share our film with the world with its WORLD premiere at imagineNATIVE Film + Media Arts Festival in Toronto, Canada - but we need your help!!!

At just 16 years old, we are New Zealand's youngest directors to be invited to debut a film at an New Zealand film festival - imagineNATIVE is the largest New Zealand Indigenous film festival in the world.

Fights to Toronto from Ōtaki (Oriwa) and Kaitaia (Te Mahara) are going to cost upwards of $2,500 each. We need your help to raise $6,000 to cover our flights and accommodation.

For us, imagineNATIVE is a huge opportunity to present our first professional film to the world, we're hoping to use this trip to connect with other Indigenous filmmakers and to programme films for other rangatahi back in Aotearoa for the Māoriland Rangatahi Film Festival.

About Us

Oriwa Hakaraia
Oriwa Kurupae Rongo Hakaraia is a 16 year old, year 11 student of Te Kura ā Iwi o Whakatupuranga Rua Mano. She is fluent in te reo Māori and the winner of several New Zealand youth short film awards.

"My dream is to spend my life making films, whether they're small scale, or big scale. My goal is to continue working in the industry, and make films that inspire people and tell stories from a Māori point of view."

Te Mahara Tamehana
Te Mahara is a 16 year old, year 11 student from Taipa in the far North. After participating in rangatahi filmmaking workshops with the Māoriland Charitable Trust, Te Mahara was selected to travel to Hawai'i (2017) and Rarotonga (2018) as a rangatahi film leader. He creates online video content for the Moko Foundation and in January 2019 shot his first short film (with budget and crew) alongside Oriwa Hakaraia.

"imagineNATIVE is an opportunity to be amongst other Indigenous filmmakers and watch films from all around the world. To travel across the world to premiere our film and experience a festival of that level will be an incredible experience and opportunity for my career. I hope that by travelling to imagineNATIVE I will be able to draw more inspiration for my own films and to develop professional contacts. I am particularly interested to attend any pitch, speed dating and industry events."