Skin in the game

The Springbok tour protests, Foreskin's Lament, Dunedin and the star of Hunt for the Wilderpeople collide in a new local feature film.

- RUSSELL BAILLIE

The motto of St Gilbert's College in Dunedin is "he iwi tahi tatou", the legendary, and probably mythological, statement that Governor William Hobson supposedly made at the first signing of the Treaty of Waitangi.

St Gilbert's headmaster Mr Slane likes to intone the phrase frequently. He does it better than that bloke playing Hobson did on telly series The Governor a few years before. He does it when wondering aloud about the rabble protesting against the Springbok tour. St Gilbert's might be a Catholic college for boys, but its true faith is rugby.

When Mr Slane invokes the four words of te reo he knows, they largely fall on deaf ears. There are only a few brown faces among all the grey jerseys and blue blazers that bear the motto.

It is Dunedin, 1981, after all. One of the few Māori kids on the roll is Josh Waaka, a bookish, bespectacled member of the underperforming second XV and the younger brother to Jamie, St Gilbert's past rugby star and former Junior All Black, who suffered a career-ending injury not long out of school. Both brothers live with their mum, Shirley. Dad Pita died a few years earlier. Shirley had emigrated from England to be with him. Now, she's got a job as the school's cleaner, one son with his dreams dashed and one who's a misfit in all sorts of ways.

Welcome to the world of Uproar, the local feature film that sets a coming-of-age and self-identification story against the dark days of 1981. But one its makers hope will find a wide audience, mainly because it's a feel-good dramedy that stars Julian Dennison and his fellow graduate of the Taika Waititi starmaking academy, James Rolleston, as those Waaka brothers. Veteran English star Minnie Driver plays their mother, Rhys Darby is Josh's mildly maverick English teacher, Brother Madigan. And Dunedin, in all its unspoilt-since-'81 glory, is a star in itself.