Shaping the system: Indigenous women, screen policy and the case of Waru in Aotearoa

Indigenous women’s filmmaking in Aotearoa is shaped by screen policy frameworks that continue to reflect settler-colonial assumptions about value, authorship and creative legitimacy. Although the New Zealand Film Commission (NZFC) now offers a commitment to equity through strategies such as Te Rautaki Māori (2018–present), these initiatives frequently operate at a level of symbolic inclusion rather than structural change. Wāhine Māori remain responsible for navigating institutional hierarchies while upholding cultural obligations to community, producing conditions in which participation is permitted but sovereignty is constrained. Waru (2017), the first wāhine Māori written and directed feature fiction film since Mauri (1988), offers a critical intervention into these dynamics. Drawing on mana wāhine scholarship and Indigenous feminist praxis, the analysis examines how Waru ’s collaborative production model of eight single-take segments directed by different Māori women mobilizes relational accountability, collective authorship and care-based leadership. This approach resists market-driven, individualized production norms embedded within the NZFC’s institutional logic and foregrounds storytelling as a culturally located, community-held responsibility. Close analysis of the film’s structure and aesthetics helps to reveal the gap between policy rhetoric and lived creative realities, particularly the ongoing cultural load felt by wāhine Māori. Positioning Waru within wider discussions of popular culture, visual sovereignty and everyday Indigenous resistance, the article argues that Indigenous women are reshaping national cinema through practices that privilege tino rangatiratanga , cultural protocol and community accountability. The findings suggest that meaningful transformation in screen policy requires a redistribution of decision-making power and recognition of Indigenous feminist methodologies as central to the future of Aotearoa’s screen industries.