Josephine Stewart-Te Whiu is an actor, writer, and director from Aotearoa. We Were Dangerous starring Erana James, Nathalie Morris, Manaia Hall, and the great Rima Te Wiata was her debut feature and won two Jury prizes at SXSW in 2024. We Were Dangerous is a dark comedy meets coming of age tale set in 1954 where a group of “Delinquent and Incorrigible Girls” are sent to a remote island to be “Christianised, Civilized, and Assimilated” into a colonised New Zealand society.
Rebellious and resourceful Nellie (James), Daisy (Hall), and Pākehā newcomer Lou (Morris) bristle against Matron (Te Wiata) who has been so co-opted by the colonialist mindset she believes she’s redeeming young women who don’t require redemption at all.
Filled with danger, adventure, humour, and the all-too-possible stain of eugenics which didn’t fall out of fashion in New Zealand after WWII: We Were Dangerous is wickedly entertaining and more than a touch chilling.
Nadine Whitney spoke with Josephine about her wonderful, witty, wise, and wild film.
We Were Dangerous is screening at The Melbourne Women in Film Festival 2025 on Thursday 20 March 2025. Check the website for details.
Tell me a little about the genesis of the film and what made you want to tell the story.
Josephine Stewart-Te Whiu: When I first wrote the script (co-authored by Maddie Dai) for We Were Dangerous the first draft was really green, so to speak. But there was something in that spoke to me. Firstly, it was the girls – the story of these young women. I kind of can't help myself and I think it's some sort of cliche, but I can't really imagine telling stories that I can't relate to. Stories about women, or a sort of female experience.
I trained as an actor, so I went to drama school for three years and I sort of came out bright, honest and very optimistic. I learned very quickly that there weren't really many interesting roles for women and people weren't writing them or making them. So, I thought, “Fine! I'll do it!” I started to write roles for myself that were interesting characters. And then I found more and more I wanted to be behind the scenes.
I was a theatre maker before as a filmmaker. I would be writing these theatre shows which had a lot of big print, so lots of description. A friend of mine, who's a filmmaker, read it the play and said, “I think this is a film.”
I was like, “No, it's a play that we're going to get the audience to come in and sit down, and I think we'll film parts of it, and we'll project it, but it's still a play…” [laughing] It's like something else knew I was meant to do this before I did.
So, it was the story and the fact that they were all female characters, all of the leads, every single lead was played by a woman which was really appealing to me.
The second inspiration is my dad. My dad was raised in state care schools in New Zealand, so he never knew his parents. He was taken off his mum and made a ward the state when he was a baby, so he was raised in boy’s homes, and he talks about it a lot. My dad is Māori. My mum is Pākehā. She's Scottish. I feel that loss of our culture and not growing up with it on my dad's side, so that that aspect of the story spoke to me as well.
And of course, the humour. I think sometimes it makes it more accessible if you're dealing with these really big conversations that people can find quite confronting. Especially maybe if it's choices that their ancestors made that aren't great choices: it's not your fault, as such but I think people can get a bit defensive about that, or reluctant to engage in a conversation. Humour and comedy kind of open that up a little bit. You kind of trick people. They don't quite know necessarily what they're engaging with. It is easier to lure them in and then, you know, when they're not looking, stab them in the back with a bit of drama, make them feel some things.
I wish I could say it's not the colonisers’ fault, but it is. It certainly is. Within Australia, my goodness. You know what's going on here with the social attitude towards our First Nations people.
JSTW: I know I just it's painful. It's painful to watch, and we're still fighting here, you know, it's not we're not perfect by a long shot either. In New Zealand, it's still a fight and a struggle.
We Were Dangerous is so incredibly adventurous. Erana James! I don't think she can do any wrong as an actor. You've got a great cast. It’s hard to believe this is Manaia Hall’s first role.
JSTW: I hope I get to work with Erana again, she's phenomenal.
That's Manaia’s first role! She was street cast in that auditioned herself. She saw a Facebook post and Manaia self-taped and sent it in. We auditioned across the country for that role.
Her parents didn't find out that she was auditioning for a feature film until she told them, “You need to drive me up to Auckland to meet a director, because I've been auditioning for a film, and they want to meet me.” Her parents were good about it but were also asking her, “What the hell have you been doing online?”
Manaia is so interesting. The role was written for someone who is chattier and very confident, and Manaia very confident, but also, she is sort of the opposite of ‘chatty’. She wasn't a huge talker. She would sit back and watch. She's very, very smart and clever, and when she would comment on something or point something out, it was usually very astute and quite funny. Plus, she loved 70s music.
The 70s ‘vibe’ is there with the Alabama Shakes song at the end of the film.
JSTW: The lead singer is a really amazing queer Black American woman, and they're a beautiful sort of blues rock band. I've always loved them, and I was thrilled that they allowed us to put their song in the work.
It’s extremely rousing and it partially of makes up for some of what I consider the deepest tragedy of the film. The character of the Matron – as awful and sadistic as she is, she is what is termed “The good daughter of colonialism.”
JSTW: That's right, and she's a victim of the system. Absolutely. The tragedy is that she can't see that, and she never will, she'll never be able to see it.
You know, we shot the film during COVID in mid 2022, and as you know, we had very strict rules here. So, there was a lot of paranoia around it. It gave us a language for Rima who plays the matron. I talked to her about her character. Matron drank the Kool-Aid. She'd gone too, too, far down the rabbit hole. There’s no real coming back for her, because she'd have to admit her own vulnerabilities, and I don't think she's got the skills to do that.
There is a moment in the film which is extremely subtle when the Pakeha woman is teaching etiquette and directs one of the girls on how to hide her “stumpy” fingers, and the matron hides her own fingers. It’s powerful because she is so self-loathing and she doesn't know what to do with it.
JSTW: Yes, to hide your bacons… fingers. It's so beautiful. I think I love that moment. It always gets a laugh from the audience. Well, a lot of people laugh at that moment. They think it's so funny. I think we give the audience permission to laugh at her a little bit or see the ridiculousness of her. But I agree with you. It's such an interesting insight into her character, and it tells you so much just with this one little gesture, about her insecurities.
One of my favorite moments lines in the film is the matron’s voice over part where she says, “It's hard to redeem a girl who believes there's nothing wrong with her.” I love that line. I feel like that's sort of the crux of the film.
There is nothing wrong with the girls. Not Nellie, not Daisy, not Louisa.
JSTW: That's right, that's right! But you know, in the 1950s there was a period in New Zealand where women, particularly young girls, were deemed as Public Enemy Number One. There was this notion that they were extremely dangerous.
The Mazengarb Report is a real document about the “dangers” of young women. Same with ‘The Fertility of the Unfit’ that is a real book that was written by New Zealand scientists. It argued for eugenics for the betterment of society. What happens on the island is fictional in terms of our story, so there aren't records of that happening. But then, you know, I don't want to sound cynical, but I think as women, our history does tend to get erased or hidden a lot, so I'll leave that one with you.
It definitely happened in places like Canada, and it more than likely happened here, and it is what happens to colonised people.
JSTW: That's right. I did look into an institute where the men were kept, until relatively recently as well. I was looking into New Zealand history thinking “Well, you know, happened at that place, so probably happened other places.”
People who were deemed mentally unwell or unfit very were at risk. The paper also argued not only about people who society deems mentally unfit, but indigenous people.
I went deep into my research for the film, and I kept stumbling across the same information. But it was like, there's just one extra thing missing to sort of confirm or to explain just how far they went to enact this. But these ideas were definitely floating around. They were being discussed. They were being put to Parliament. Whether or not things happened… it's really interesting our government, the Helen Clark government, in the 1990s made a public apology about that report. I do wonder, I do wonder, I do wonder. I do wonder, especially if it happened to people who can't necessarily advocate for themselves or tell their story? That worries me.
It wasn't subtle. It read basically as, “We need to get rid of the burden of the people who aren't white in New Zealand.
JSTW: That’s right, because they're not as “evolved” white people. It is such a binary way of looking at the world. It's so crazy, it's just all about control, really. That was the essence of the film. Thematically what I'd always talk about was order and chaos. The girls are sort of the chaos, the messiness, and the Matron is the system and requires order.
The girls are also joy. When they're doing the haka, or when they're dancing.
JSTW: They are just dancing just being free, like they're just “being.” I wanted the scene where they are dancing to music the audience can’t hear to feel like they were in their bodies as free as they could be in themselves and who they are in their bodies.
And for some reason, when people do that, even today, people find that threatening and they want to shut it down. I don't know why. It isn't harmful to other people. That's what I really wanted that scene to represent.
The game that they're playing is a game that kids play in schools. They’re not even really speaking Māori or what they're doing is, like extremely basic. It doesn't really, you know, they're just saying a phrase repeatedly and it has no real meaning behind it.
What that is saying, also, is that these girls, a lot of them, have lost their culture. They have had that taken away from them. So, they've created this game based on the little that they know and what they understand of who they are and where they come from.
That’s very subtle but it will be in there for the people who do know Te reo Māori. They will understand what the meaning is behind that. And that's why, in the in the shot afterwards, you see they a shot of the English only song.
We are taking the piss a little bit. I really wanted the Queen Elizabeth II in there. She was quite important to me because she had just been coronated a year after the film is set. I found her interesting because she was so young. She's only a few years older than these girls in the school and yet she's the “Supreme Leader.” She rules over them and she's a woman. It is such a dichotomy where all these men are in charge, and then you have this young woman who is Queen, who's the top. Simultaneously it's something to strive for, yet also she's the figurehead of the system of repression and the loss of who they are as people. I find the duality of it interesting. Nothing is black and white.
I think that same for the matron, she's not just an evil person. There is good in her and there is humanity, but it's been lost, and that's not her fault either. As we discussed earlier that that's come from the system of control.
There is a line that the Matron says about Daisy. She doesn't know who her family is, but she claims her inheritance is her perfect nose.
JSTW: Oh, Daisy. She's just wonderful. She is such a beautiful character. I love that she's had it the hardest, yet she is the most open. They haven't broken her. They haven't broken the beauty of her.
I don't think those three will be broken. They're the symbol of hope. We don't know what happens beyond them getting on the raft. But I like to believe they sail to freedom.
JSTW: I'm glad you like and believe that. I think it's challenged a few people that I chose not to show a definitive conclusion. Part of that reasoning is I want the audience to decide for themselves based on their own life experience. I think you bring who you are in your life when you when you watch stories, and you fill it in yourself. Narratively, it's time for them to write their own story. The whole idea is that they're in control of that now.
I just wanted to say thank you so very much for the film. It is wonderful to see girls, queer girls, indigenous girls taking their lives into their own control in whatever era.
JSTW: When we were in pre-production, I think we were three weeks out from our first day of shoot, Roe v Wade was overturned. I remember thinking, “This is insane. This is crazy. I can't believe this is all still so relevant.”
I just turned forty, right? And I was thinking to myself, maybe you will be able to answer this, the world is so strange. It feels quite surreal now. And I was like, “Is this normal?” Like, is this the normal part of turning forty, where you look back and you're like, “Am I romanticising the years before? Is this normal, or is what's happening in the world not normal?”
What is happening in the world is not normal. It is extreme, extreme backlash. It's terrifying. Absolutely everything is binary in people's minds.
JSTW: I know it's crazy, right? People are so hung up on it. It is so frustrating. You know, my partner's nonbinary, and I really feel for them. I don't think things have to be so black and white, or good or bad, or us and them. It's so hard.
Perhaps the solution is to build a raft and hoist a flag – or perhaps the solution is to keep making thoughtful political art like We Were Dangerous. Whatever the answer is, or answers are, through being dangerous and bringing history to light like Josephine does, the right questions can be asked.
We Were Dangerous is screening at The Melbourne Women in Film Festival 2025. Check the website for details.
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