We Were Dangerous

After all, We Were Dangerous isn’t a doom-laden exposé about a specific episode of female dehumanization. It’s a hopeful — sometimes borderline exuberant — rallying cry for girls to stick together across the various divides that people use to disempower them.

– Reviewer David Ehrlich, IndieWire website, 8 March 2024

We've got all sorts: waifs, strays, sex delinquents...that's a new one.

– The Matron (Rima Te Wiata) characterizes her students

Being a moral participant in society is the key.

– The Matron (Rima Te Wiata) advises the students on behaviour

Best case scenario: you're let into polite society.

– Daisy (Manaia Hall) on the likely outcomes of the reform school

Our studies show young women are more promiscuous . . . It's best not to think of the girls as wives and mothers. It may well be beyond them.

– A doctor advises the Matron the the student's potential futures

We're not becoming civilised on this island; we're just not becoming pregnant.

– Nellie (Erana James) fights back against the Matron

I always knew I wanted to write a story about teenage girls. And I always knew I wanted to write an escape film and a film that really championed their friendships and had a lot of joy in it, in spite of all this dark historical context that was interesting to me.

– Writer Maddie Dai on the inspirations behind We Were Dangerous, Variety, 22 March 2024

When we look at our history through cinema, it can be really heavy and our retelling of that does fall quite hard into drama. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with it, but I don’t want the film to get boxed into that, and I don’t want people to feel like this film is inaccessible for them, [that] it’s going to be this hard, heavy, film about mistreatment of young people in state care. There is very much an element of that but the flip side . . . is the joy, lightness, and celebration of friendships. There are elements of the trauma but I feel like we’ve also balanced the darkness with the light. You can’t have one without the other.

– Director Josephine Stewart-Te Whiu on the film being a work of fiction, Flicks website, 14 August 2024

In 2022, we all moved down to Christchurch for three months, in the dead of winter, to shoot a film about teenage girlhood and giving the middle finger to the system. It was still the COVID era . . . I directed the entire film wearing a facemask. It wasn’t so bad; the mask protected our cheeks and lips from being chapped and beaten by the Antarctic winds that whipped around the Banks Peninsula.

– Director Josephine Stewart-Te Whiu on shooting the film in 2022, Madman press release, 22 August 2024