Once Were Warriors is a powerfully raw and deeply affecting film about the mother's desperate struggle to keep her family together. Beth Heke is a mother who will do anything to protect her children. Jake is husband, a brute of a man whose hard drinking ways and volatile personality threaten to tear the family apart. Beth struggles to keep her family together, though the violence takes its toll -- one son has joined a vicious gang, the other has been taken to a welfare home -- but she remains faithful to Jake. Still untouched is Grace, their teenage daughter who is a gifted writer and a thinker who is also the most vulnerable member of the family. What happens to her changes the family's life forever. Beth will at last e forced to make a choice and to seek a new alternative for her own survival.
Winner of Australia Film Institude (1995) - Best Foreign Film Award - Robin Scholes
Winner of 9 New Zealand Film and TV Awards (1994) including Best Director -Lee Tamahori, Best Editing - Michael Horton, Best Film - Robin Scholes, Best Film Score - Murray Grindlay & Murray McNabb, Best Juvenile Performance - Taungaroa Emile, Best Performance in a Dramatic Role: Male - Temuera Morrison, Best Performance in a Supporting Role: Female - Mamaengaroa Kerr-Bell, Best Screenplay - Riwia Brown & Best Soundtrack - Kit Rollings, Ray Beentjes , Michael Hedges
Graham Morris
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