One Thousand Ropes

The power to change, the strength to heal.

– The film's advertising tagline

Putting to bed expectations that Samoans only appear on screen for laughs or as gangsters (as in The Last Saint), One Thousand Ropes heralds a bright young talent in New Zealand filmmaking and a refreshingly frank window into the lives of our neighbours.

– Sarah Watt in a four and a half star review, Stuff, 19 March 2017

Handsomely filmed in central Wellington, it mixed workaday social realism with elements of folk-tale and myth, and if there were references that eluded Palagi viewers, it was the work of a storyteller at ease with the ineffable.

– Reviewer Peter Calder, in The Listener list of the 20 Best Films of 2017, 16 December 2017