The story revolves around Luisa Palmeira, born in France from Portuguese immigrants. In 1979, Luisa is eight years old. Almost a grown-up in the eyes of her illiterate mother, she remains just a little girl to her hard-drinking father. One day, he trusts her with a heavy secret he suffers from a serious illness. But she refuses to believe him and thinks instead that he is hiding something else from her…
Taratoa Stappard’s brooding debut feature plunges us into the dour moors of 1859 North Yorkshire, where the British Empire’s reach casts long and twisted shadows. Mary Stevens (Ariāna Osborne), a young Māori teacher from Aotearoa (New Zealand), arrives in search of family truths, only to find the man who summoned her already dead and no clear path home. Stranded in an unfamilia...