Child of the Rainbow Warrior

Television (Full Length) – 1995

Blackmail, lies and secrecy feature heavily in this TV3 documentary, which follows the teenage daughter of the photographer killed in the 1985 bombing of Greenpeace ship Rainbow Warrior. Marelle Pereira was just eight when her father Fernando died after French Secret Service agents set off two bombs in Auckland. The boat was set to protest nuclear testing in French Polynesia. Now 18, Pereira and her mum travel to French Polynesia, France and Aotearoa to ask why the French carried out the attack. Pereira interviews Rainbow Warrior crew and former Kiwi PM David Lange.

The people that killed your father went back to France and then got promoted, honoured by France. Now that offends my sense of what’s right and what’s wrong. And a lot of people blame me for that. I’ve got my own defence to that. I don’t, in that sense, blame myself at all, but it’s still a lurking sadness. I can’t dismiss it. I wish that it hadn’t happened that way.
– Former Prime Minister David Lange, talking to Marelle Pereira in his Mangere electorate office