Kāinga

Film (Trailer) – 2022

Mature

Anthology feature Kāinga explores what the concept of 'home' ('kāinga' in te reo) means to Asian-Kiwi families in Aotearoa. The writers and directors are Māori-Chinese, Chinese, Filipino, Indian, Iranian, Japanese, Korean, Malaysian, Myanma and Tamil Eelam. The film is split into eight ten-minute shorts and spans half a century. Each story is set in the same suburban house, and explores a different immigrant experience of New Zealand. Kāinga follows on from acclaimed anthology films Waru and the Pacific-spanning Vai. It is the first feature film to be made available in full on the Radio New Zealand website.

I often say inside me I have the coloniser, the indigenous and the settler and I have lived with that my whole life, trying to 'be at home' but feeling unsettled, all these kind of tensions and understandings about place that are inside me and I feel like that was something that my grandparents also experienced and my Mum's generation as well.
– Writer Mei-Lin Te Puea Hansen on her mixed Chinese and Māori whakapapa feeding into her story in drama Kainga, RNZ, 20 August 2023