Rain of the Children

Acclaimed New Zealand director Vincent Ward gave his debut in 1978 with the documentary In Spring One Plants Alone, whose chief protagonist was 80-year-old Puhi from the Maori tribe of Tuhoe, who devoted her life to caring for her adult schizophrenic son. She was convinced that some strange curse was to blame for her luckless fate. Almost thirty years after his documentary debut, Ward decided to find out more about Puhi. With the help of recollections from people who knew her, unique archive footage and a series of inspired acted sequences, he creates a sensitive mosaic of the life of this remarkable woman. Among other things, he discovers that she was mother to 14 children, that she was a famous beauty and that she had been chosen as a wife for the son of the Tuhoe prophet Rua Kenana. In a reconstruction of Puhi’s life, Vincent Ward also describes the challenges facing the original inhabitants of New Zealand during the colonisation which occurred in the first half of the 20th century.