Tuakiri Huna - White Lies is a story of three women, the lies and shared identity that binds them. It’s a Maori story told, unusually, by a Mexican screenwriter and director Dana Rotberg.

She shares her own journey of culture and identity with Renee Liang.

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White Lies is a special feature film in many respects.  Not only is it a Maori story told with great sensitivity and compassion by a Mexican director, Dana Rotberg, but it's another Witi Ihimaera story adapted into a major film. His first, Whale Rider, became Niki Caro’s acclaimed film.

Dana Rotberg literally bought a plane ticket the day after seeing the film, and moved halfway around the world to start a new life for her daughter and herself.  A stranger in a new country, and thinking her filmmaking days were behind her, she was introduced by a mutual friend to South Pacific Pictures’ producer, John Barnett. He gifted her a book of Ihimaera’s stories – and his novella Medicine Woman became the inspiration for the new film.  I talked to Dana about finding stories – her own and others’.

Why did you become a filmmaker?

I always loved going to the cinema and I still do… I guess that my love for cinema comes from a combination of two very rich and happy experiences from childhood … Ever since I can remember, my father would take me and my sisters every Wednesday to watch a film. It was the most exciting and happy day of the week for me.

The other source is I guess, the late afternoon lectures in school reading the Old Testament in Hebrew. The most fascinating stories, extreme, sometimes brutal stories, that would take my imagination to remote and unknown  landscapes and characters…  I just loved those two hours at the end of the school day, under Mexico city’s 2:30 pm heat -  traveling in time back to those mythological and primal tales…  

Are you aware of the types of stories that fascinate you, or is it only later that you see a trend?

I am aware now, after a couple of decades doing films. But I don’t have a specific thematic agenda. Stories grab my gut and my heart and I just let them take me to where they need to go. I don’t operate in a very rational way, it’s mainly an emotional experience first and then, through the process of script writing, I can have a more  pragmatic approach to the structure and construction of the narrative elements I am dealing with.

I understand the decision to come to New Zealand was very spontaneous - have you found things as you expected?

To be honest, again, my brain doesn’t function in a rational strategic manner. I came here because I was deeply moved by a film and the universe it conveyed.  I had no clear or constructed expectations. All I knew was that this was a place where I could find peace, some kind of democratic political system and a space where my daughter could flourish away from the horrific violence that had taken over Mexico.

For the rest, I could have never imagined all that my life would become here. And what I have found is more beautiful than what I could ever have expected. I am deeply grateful to this country for giving shelter to my daughter and I, and I acknowledge every morning the many blessing this country has.

I find it interesting that at the same time you were adapting the novella Medicine Woman, you were also adapting to life in a new country.  Have you found any parallels and have the two processes helped each other?

This is a very complex question and I am still a “work in progress” immigrant to this country… I can only say that the experience of being able to have a glimpse into the universe of Tuhoe has been a most sacred and profoundly moving event in my life. An event that has reshaped me for ever and has make me a better person.  And for that I am endlessly grateful.

You are very interested in how immigration affects identity and culture. How has immigration affected your own identity?

I have been an intermittent immigrant most of my life… And that experience has shaped my understanding of how we belong or not, to where we come from or where we live… And yes, immigration has affected me and all I know is that the question is to be able to create a fine and always changing balance…  a balance that can allow me to retain a sense of who I am and how I see the world in a way that doesn’t shut down for me the possibilities that a new and different reality may hold. Sometimes it is not easy, sometimes it is not clear how to hold that balance, but I guess that is the beauty of it. Nothing is ever settled in stone! It’s an intense and dynamic sense of self and others, and that is what keeps me always curious and alert!

What cultural identity do you wish for your daughter, who can now claim several cultures?

I believe that my daughter has a very diverse cultural make up and it is precisely that what can make her a free and universal human being. She can enrich herself from so many sources of identity and culture… Jewish, Muslim, Catholic, Indigenous Mexican, Colonial Mexican,  Polish, Italian, we even have an anarchist among my ancestors, thank god!!!

What are the parallels between Mexican and Maori culture?

This is a question for a scholar and I am not one.  I am a story teller and I do not pretend to know more than what my stories tell, so I will try to answer from that place. I believe that they are two basic parallels, one is the historical experience of colonization and the other one is the holistic cosmogony that all indigenous cultures share all over the planet.  From that place, a story about survival, identity and motherhood, is rooted in the vast territory of the human experience.

Do you believe that culture is becoming more universal?

I believe that we are going though a very dangerous paradox. Globalisation has the brutal tendency to make us all identical consumers of an identical market. The uniqueness of who we are is being traded for what, in my opinion, is a very distorted misrepresentation of universality. I think that technology has enabled us to communicate with almost all, (at least in that part of the world where computers are a given reality), and time and distance have lost their restrictive qualities in that respect.  But at the same time we are being bombarded by a flattening and bleaching understanding of who we are, by the monopoly of those who retain the control of that communication. And from that place, I believe that retaining a strong sense of our cultural identity is what can save us from becoming identical consumer zombies…

You've been successful in collaborating with Tuhoe and the people of Ruatahuna, to tell a story which is very close to them. What advice would you give to someone from another culture who wanted to work with a Maori story?

Do NOT do it if you don’t have their permission, ever. Be sure you have the strength to honour it with integrity, the humbleness to listen to those who know, and the awareness that the story belongs to them and only to them.

As a director, how do you approach working with actors who may have more cultural knowledge than yourself?  How much space versus borders do you give them?

It is not a fixed and strict method of working… It changes most of the time… it depends on each actor and circumstances… In the case of this film, all the actors who play in Te Urewera and the Oputao Marae setting of the story are the people who live in Ruatahuna and they know much better than me how their characters are and behave… So my role in that case was to create the space and support to let them express their characters  with full respect. They would need no direction at all from me, on the contrary, I was grateful that they were ready to participate in the film as the people they really are in their every day life. And the result couldn’t be better… it is truthful and full of life… In some other cases, the work of a director with the actor becomes a very precise dissection of the dramatic composition of the character and that sometimes goes beyond the cultural make up of the actor and the character as well.

What are you working on next?

Going back to my very happy life of being the mother of my very beautiful and loved daughter!