Broken Barrier marked the first New Zealand dramatic feature to be made since 1940. Its production saw directors John O'Shea and Roger Mirams crowding into a Vauxhall with two silent cameras, one picked up "from a dead German in the Western Desert". Ditching dialogue for 'spoken thoughts', the pioneering film examines cultural complications in a romance between a Pākehā journalist (Terence Bayler) and a Māori nurse (Kay Ngarimu, aka Keita Whakato Walker). According to O'Shea, some viewers considered it "a dirty movie" for spurring mixed race relationships.

Director Alyx Duncan set out to make an experimental documentary about her childhood home. What eventually resulted was this acclaimed and award-winning "fictional essay", her first full length feature. Blurring the line between documentary and drama, she cast her conservationist father and Chinese born step-mother as characters partially based on themselves. As they journey from a small NZ island to a big Chinese city, Duncan examines their cross cultural relationship and explores nostalgia, childhood, dreams, environmentalism, globalisation and the meaning of home.

This 2014 web series follows a South Auckland family chasing a talent quest title. In this 10th episode (out of 20) the Saumalu family debates Moana’s shock announcement that she is getting engaged to Indian-Kiwi Dev. The head-girl and student DJ are a South Auckland Romeo and Juliet. Dad Kavana wants to send Moana home for some ‘Fa’a Samoa’ (‘Samoan way’) education. Meanwhile Moana finds out that Dev is already engaged, and decides to move things to the next level. The series was based on the hit stage show that debuted at the 2013 Auckland Arts Festival.

Roseanne Liang's documentary Banana in a Nutshell tells the story of her romance with Stephen Harris. After falling in love at university, everything seemed perfect for the pair. Enter Liang’s traditional Chinese parents, and suddenly the prospect of her marriage to a Pākehā got a lot more complicated. In this excerpt, Liang guides viewers through her childhood, romance, and threatened disownment by her parents. Liang added an extended epilogue when her award-winning film hit DVD. The couple's story was later fictionalised for Liang’s 2011 feature My Wedding and Other Secrets. 

This documentary looks at Māori painter/sculptor Darcy Nicholas. Nicholas grew up in the Taranaki, among extended whanau. “We didn’t have much money, but we had a lot of aroha and a lot of land to play in”. It looks at Nicholas’s relationship to his Māoritanga, and at how he took on the mantle of helping organise Toi Māori: The Eternal Flame - the first touring exhibition of Māori weaving. He and other participants recall their experiences of travelling to America, and weaving “a map of friendship” with native American tangata whenua.

Contest day has finally dawned; but will the competitors make it on stage in time? In this fifth episode of the PI-flavoured web series, it is the big day for the X-Factory contest, but as the first teams start performing, one of the Saumalus is missing in action: oldest sibling Tavita (Taofia Pelesasa) is caught up in some delicate yet insult-filled negotiations involving black market paua. The makers of The Factory auditioned talent in various South Auckland halls and markets; nearly half of the cast are first time actors. 

In the 1970s Yorkshire emigre Craig Harrison turned the odd couple tale of a Māori and a Yorkshireman into a novel, a radio play, and this popular sitcom. Joe (Stephen Gledhill) is the nervy, university-educated librarian; his flatmate is city-raised Koro (Rawiri Paratene, in one of his earliest lead roles) who works in a fish and chip shop. In this episode, Koro’s dodgy homemade wine helps inspire embarrassing scenes at a party of Joe’s friends. Among drunkard Pākehā, watch out for a paralytic Kevin J Wilson, and a rare pre-Pork Pie appearance by Claire Oberman.

This black and white short film explores a relationship triangle — between a Māori woman, her boorish Pākehā husband, and the woman’s protective father, arguing over rights to a farm. It was made as an Auckland University masters project by Li Geng Xin; he wanted to tell a story using visual language, and choses the expressive mode of the silent film to do so. Māori instruments (taonga puoro) and piano are used on the soundtrack. Mrs Mokemoke was selected for the 2015 NZ International Film Festival, in the Ngā Whanaunga Māori Pasifika Shorts programme. 

Teen actors Nikki Si'ulepa and Toby Fisher won acclaim in Ian Mune's fourth feature as director. Si'ulepa plays a Samoan street kid who meets a well-off white teen, when both are facing mortality in a hospital ward. The co-production between NZ and Canada (where it debuted on cable TV) won over critics in both nations. "Si'ulepa dominates the camera and the action with a natural authority", raved Metro. Moon scooped the gongs at the 1996 TV Guide Awards (including for originating screenwriter Richard Lymposs); and won notice at Berlin and Giffoni film festivals.

The odd couple is a longtime comic staple. In the 1970s Yorkshire emigre Craig Harrison turned the tale of a Māori and a Yorkshireman into novel Ground Level, a radio play, and this ground-breaking TV series. Joe (Stephen Gledhill) is the nervy, university-educated librarian; his flatmate is Koro (Rawiri Paratene) who works in a fish and chip shop. Running for two series, the popular chalk’n’cheese sitcom was a rare comedy amongst a flowering of bicultural TV stories (The Governor, Epidemic). Harrison’s novel The Quiet Earth later inspired a classic film.