First Horse
2024 · 11m · New Zealand
Directed by Awanui Simich-Pene
Genres: coming-of-age, drama, historical
Tones: contemplative, melancholic, tender
In 1826 Aotearoa, on the cusp of colonisation, a young Māori girl's encounter with a dying man and his horse exposes her to the best and worst of a rapidly changing world.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
This is exactly the kind of prestige historical moment everyone expects a Māori director to deliver—and Simich-Pene does it so well that I'm annoyed I can't find something genuinely strange to hate about it.
A formally composed threshold film that knows its place in the lineage of colonial encounter narratives while finding genuine tenderness in the specific grammar of a girl's gaze; the restraint here is everything.
The decision to let the horse—not the dying man, not the approaching colonizers—become the emotional center of the frame is the kind of quiet formal choice that transforms what could've been earnest into something unforgettable.