Whale Rider

The genius of the movie is the way it sidesteps all of the obvious cliches of the underlying story and makes itself fresh, observant, tough and genuinely moving ... this is not a simplistic fable but the story of real people living in modern times.

– Roger Ebert in a Chicago Star-Times review, 20 June 2003

If we didn’t have a Paikea, we didn’t have a film. A few people could play Koro, a few people could play Porourangi, a few people could play Rawiri. But boy we really needed just one person to play that girl, and that wasn’t an easy find. 

– Actor Rawiri Paratene on the casting of Keisha Castle-Hughes, in documentary Behind the Scenes of Whale Rider

I always say that he is one of the most honest characters I've ever encountered. He is absolutely true to his tikanga —  to his understanding of Māori culture and customs. But with that integrity comes a stubbornness and a pride and that's what trips him up.

– Actor Rawiri Paratene describes his character of Koro, IndieLondon website

When we finished the film we gifted the waka to Whangara because for a long time they were building a canoe there and for all sorts of reasons it didn’t happen. It’s a living memory of what we were doing there, what their story is and how they participated.

– Producer John Barnett on the 18 metre long waka built for the film, in the Whale Rider press kit

I had never worked with children before and it suits me. I like how direct they are. I like the economy of language that you need to have when working with kids. You have to be very clear with them. The film I made before was about a Japanese couple and I worked with actors whose first language was Japanese. And that’s where I started to learn a directing process that works for me, which is getting an economy of words that someone who isn’t as agile in the language can understand. Working with children is very similar.

– Director Niki Caro in an interview with American website IndieWire, 6 June 2003

Cinematographer Leon Narbey shoots the film with a poet’s eye. We see fantastic underwater shots of majestic whales; silhouettes of young children playing at dusk on rocks that line the beach; wide shots of the color-drenched New Zealand landscape. But it’s the emotional echo chamber that Caro creates within the film that really resonates. 

– American reviewer Ernest Hardy in L.A. Weekly review, 6 June 2003

The cinematography is gorgeous, the emotions primal, and the tensions compelling enough to captivate anyone who's ever looked for an approaching smile from a disapproving elder, sitting there in the theatre you're eleven again.

– Bob Mondello in a review of the film for NPR's All Things Considered, 7 June 2003