Unbreakable

We Were Dangerous

One of the big hitters at this year’s ImagineNative festival in Toronto, We Were Dangerous, which also screened at SXSW and BFI Flare last year, follows three girls whose friendship gives them to courage to resist in a Fifties New Zealand/Aotearoa reform school. Although we had a challenge lining up our schedules in very different time zoned, I was delighted to have the opportunity to speak with director Josephine Stewart-Te Whiu. What really stood out to me about the film, and what I raise with her straight away, is how full of joy it is, despite the darkness of the subject matter. That gives it power.

“I've seen a lot of films and I think there are a lot of stories which do tend to focus on the trauma,” she agrees. “That's not to take away from that either, by saying that. The trauma is very much there, but I wasn't sure what I'd be adding if I focused on these really traumatic events and these things that happen to these young women. I wanted it to feel hopeful, essentially, and that change is possible and that resistance is a good thing. So I decided that I would focus on their friendships.

Josephine Stewart-Te Whiu

“I knew that was going to be the key to bring joy to the film, and if I changed the POV to really be set on the celebration of friendship and camaraderie, then I felt like that would ride this wave of these terrible things that are happening to these kids, but it wouldn't be the hyperfocus of the film. And yeah, all those documents are real, that the script references – that the government in New Zealand put out. I went and I read them as a part of my prep. But I learned pretty quick that I needed to move it from a place that was quite cerebral, so we started talking to survivors of these schools. My dad is one of them.

“My dad was taken off his family as a baby and he was raised through state care his entire childhood. He was sort of shuffled around different boys’ homes in New Zealand, and some foster homes. So we spoke to these survivors and I noticed a lot of what sort of swam to the surface was the friendships and the bonds they had formed in these places. That was really gratifying in a way, because it was my instinct. But also I had to tread really carefully because I haven't suffered that personally. It took a really long time to get the tone right. We were in the edit for nearly a year, basically to nail the tone, making sure there was humor and there was lightness, but also that it wasn't taking away from real people that had gone through these schools, that are alive today.”

We talk about character development.

“I really wanted them to feel like three dimensional characters, these young women,” she says. “I wanted them to have flaws and I wanted them to be impulsive at times and I wanted them to fight. I wanted them to feel really real. I kind of like that they spat at times. That's just part of who they are as they grow up, as they learn who they are as people and what their place is in the world and what privileges they have or don't have.”

A lot of the purpose of these schools was to break down the confidence of individuals. It's really important that these girls have confidence and feel from the start that they're right to be who they are, and that they're sure of themselves.

“That's right. That's my favourite line in the film, that the matron says to Nellie. She doesn't think there’s anything wrong with her because there is, of course, nothing wrong with her at all. But it encapsulates the system so beautifully in that one line. And yeah, it is quite tragic in a sense, with their education and what they've been groomed for.” She pauses for a moment. “To be honest, I don't think much has changed. Even though this is a serious film, I think it's very relevant today still. Very much so. I mean, I was in pre production, so we were about a month out from shooting the film and America axed Roe vs. Wade, and I just remember thinking ‘Wow, this is still so relevant and so prevalent everywhere, globally.’

“You know, our own Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern, stood down because of the harassment that she was receiving about who she was and just basically being a woman. It's everywhere at the moment. I mean, in New Zealand, we've never had a Māori female prime minister. We've never even had a Māori prime minister. All of our prime ministers have been pākehā – white, Caucasian. So that says a lot about leadership. But going back to the matron, I really love her character too, because even though she sort of represents the system, she's a part of it herself. And I guess that's the tragedy of her, is that she'll never be able to recognise that she's a puppet within this system, and that she herself is groomed to become this figure and to leave out these tasks because she's got a similar background to these characters. She too was raised in a version of state care.”

We get the feeling that she was somebody who did want to be reformed and she's grateful for having been Christianised, I suggest.

“Yeah, but she's been told that since she was a little girl, you know, through fear and control. And then she gets given a bit of power and look at what happens. What does that look like? You know, that's what her character asks, that question. So Rima Te Wiata, who plays the matron, we had so many discussions leading up to shoot and what we basically landed on was that she went so far down the rabbit hole, she's probably never going to come back to any sort of reasoning or redemption. But I like to leave it open. Maybe when she is crying on the hillside, the viewer can decide: is she crying because she does have a sense of grief over what she's become, or is she crying because she fears for the repercussions of [what has happened]?”

We move on to talk about the title of the film and the dangerousness of girls who, as the matron puts it, don’t think there is anything wrong with them. She reflects on the publication of the Mazengarb Report in 1954.

“It basically labelled young women as public enemy number one, the most dangerous, you know – seducing men, having orgies, doing all sorts of terrible things. Change was coming, you know, and American influence. There was real concern about that in New Zealand at the time and what that would do. “This is a fictional film, it's not based on a real story. Once we decided that, it kind of opened us up to a lot of freedom. I very deliberately supported the writer in this to be contemporary. I didn't want the dialogue to feel like it was of that time. I wanted the girls to speak almost like they were teenagers today, and part of that is accessibility as well for younger audiences. I wanted them to engage with the film and feel like it was for them, not just a historical period piece.”

The historical narrative was tricky to piece together, she says, because there’s a subject the film touches on which is talked about but for which there is no documentary evidence. She didn’t want to dismiss it but she also didn’t want to create a false narrative. Elsewhere, it made sense to be inventive, as with the idea of having the school on an island.

“It makes them feel very isolated, if they're completely removed,” she says. “It ups the stakes.”

There’s a lot of character in the locations, I note.

“We shot the film in the south island of New Zealand at a place called the Banks Peninsula, just out of Christchurch. We only spent three days on an island. That island has these old barracks which I think were built for World War One and then they were just repurposed and repurposed, for army training. They were used for Antarctic exhibitions where they would train there and then set sail for the Antarctic. In fact, there was even a girls school in the 1950s that would go there to summer holiday. And they built the old stone walls that you see in the film. They were built by the girls – that was their summer holiday.”

We exchange grim laughter.

“But, yes, we only spent three days there,” she continues. “So the scene where they're dancing, that's the old barracks and it's really cool because if you look really closely, the walls are just lined with graffiti. They're all scratched in. In fact, some of it's a bit modern. I think there's some phone numbers and stuff. And then the old school house is on Iwi land – they’re a sub-tribe. They allowed us to use their really old school house, which is so beautiful and quaint and it's right by the water that's on the peninsula now, so we're no longer on the island.

“Then the huts where the girls sleep, we built those on the big, windy peninsula. It was ice cold. I know it looks really beautiful in the film. It was shot in winter and the Antarctic winds would come and whip across it. The south island has really beautiful sunny winters, so it looks gorgeous, but it's just ice cold. In fact, on the day that we filmed them on the beach, it snowed, and I was like, ‘Oh, God, we're not going to get this.’ Well, actually, my producers were thinking ‘Oh, God, we're not going to get this,’ and I was very excited because I was like, ‘This is going to look so beautiful on camera.’ But then of course, the clouds went away and the sun came out.

“So yeah, everywhere that we filmed was basically chosen for different buildings and the visual location of it all. And there's lots of little details in there, like the trees where they argue. They're all old pine trees, but what I love is that they're not native to New Zealand. So it kind of places the viewer anywhere, in terms of an international audience. But it also says a lot, I think, about the colonisation that happened in New Zealand. The stripping back of the land, of the people, of the culture. But of course, that's if you want to go into layers upon layers.”

We discuss the casting process, the importance of getting the right chemistry between the girls, and a rumour I heard: that one of the girls auditioned for a joke and never expected to get the part. Josephine laughs.

“Yes, Daisy. So we knew with the other roles we knew were going to cast professional actors, but then we really wanted to cast an unknown actor in the role of Daisy, someone who just had the thing. We auditioned all across New Zealand and my casting director, Kate McGill, put out a casting call on Facebook to get people to self tape. Manaia sent in a tape of herself and she was so charming and funny that we got her to audition. All we asked in the self tape was just ‘introduce yourself, say a little bit about you’. So we went off, initially, just who they were. It wasn't about giving them a script and doing a lines test or anything like that. It's not my style.

“She was so charming, so we sent her a script and we got her to tape that for herself and she did really well actually. She made it her own. I didn't get too hung up on lines learning. That's kind of something that I think – especially when you're working with children or actors who aren't trained or professional – you have to let that go a little bit and you have to let them lead it. Otherwise it can get a bit robotic or flat as a performance. So we got her to do these multiple auditions online and then I said ‘Let's meet her,’ and we invited her to come up to Auckland, which is a big city. She lives in a very small east coast New Zealand town by the beach. And that's when she told her parents. She went to the her parents and said ‘I've been auditioning online for a film and now they want me to come to Auckland.’ Luckily her parents were really good about it.”

Having an amateur in the cast allowed her to do something she hadn’t planned on. “There's a scene in the film – it's actually one of my favourite scenes – where the three girls are lying on the floor together. All of that's improvised. They were waiting for us setting up cameras, and I was watching them as the lights were being done, and I said to my first AD ‘Start rolling.’ And they started shooting and very quietly it went through the set. The girls didn't know that we were filming, so they were practicing lines and just being silly. And that's why Daisy takes the piss out of the matron, because she's copying Rima, not realising that were actually filming them. Luckily, our two other actors caught on pretty quick, Erana and Nat, because they're well established actors. So then they would gently lead Manaia back to the film, or say things that maybe the character might say. And that's how we got that scene. And I love that scene.”

A lot of the young people in the cast had no familiarity with the darker side of the subject matter, she says.

“Erana and Nat did. They're amazing women, those two. They're highly intelligent and they both did their own research. The rest of the girls, they didn't. We would talk about it a little bit, but I didn't feel a huge need to weigh them down with that because I wanted them to have a sense of play and of joy. Because all of the actors in the school, apart from Erana and Nat, who play Nellie and Lou, were just local school kids from Christchurch. The whole school is made up of local kids that haven't acted before, or they've done, like, a school play. So it was important to me that we somehow kept them in that bubble.

“I think there always changes in the making the film. I personally believe the film starts to tell you and will show you what it wants and it kind of becomes its own living beast. Particularly in the editing process, you're almost rewriting the film from scratch at times. And I think, particularly with so many of the cast being not professional actors, I had to be open to things shifting. I'm really wary of overcorrecting an actor. I don't want to knock their confidence. I want them to feel like they have permission to play. I mean, that's what it is – that's why it's called a play. It's pretend. And I want them to feel safe. That's my biggest job as a director, to make the actors feel safe enough and secure enough to really go there, whether it's emotional or playful.”

She’s thrilled by the response that the film has had so far, she says – and by this festival opportunity.

“I am so excited. I love ImagineNative. I've only been there once before. I've had two films screen there. This will be my third film that screens there. It was mind blowing. It was just an amazing collective of indigenous people from around the world and so many cultures that I didn't really know about or understand about. I got to experience that and I got to watch the stories on screen.

“It's the largest indigenous film festival in the world, but there's a sort of intimacy to it and a real sense of community. I think with some of those big A-list festivals you can feel like a really little fish in a big pond, and you don't really feel that at ImagineNative. It's quite inclusive. So yeah, I’m very, very happy.”