Mana Over Meth
2022 · 10m · New Zealand
Directed by Holly Beckham
Genres: biography, documentary, drama
Tones: contemplative, melancholic, tender
Jessica Apanui, shaped by a violent childhood, turns to Māoritanga to break a meth addiction for the sake of her children.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
Everyone expects the redemption-through-culture beat, so Beckham's refusal to make Māoritanga a tidy solution—just a real, messy anchor—is where the actual subversion lives; most films would've softened that tension into inspiration-porn.
Beckham positions herself within a lineage of documentary-inflected portraiture that honors witness over spectacle, using restraint and direct testimony to locate dignity in a narrative the mainstream typically renders as pathology.
The decision to let Apanui's own voice—unadorned, unheroic—carry the emotional weight instead of overlaying it with score or montage is what transforms this from earnest advocacy into something that actually breathes.