Recalling Rousseau

New Zealand-made documentary This Way of Life is a “gloriously photographed film” — “a story of a Maori family catapulted beyond mere portraiture and into a realm of metaphysics, melancholia and cosmic doubt”, writes Variety reviewer John Anderson. Directed and produced by the husband-wife team of Thomas Burstyn and Barbara Sumner Burstyn, the self-funded This Way of Life was shot over four years in the Ruahine Ranges and at Waimarama Beach, Hawke’s Bay, and follows Peter and Colleen Karena as they raise their six children off the land. “Its attractive, unconventional subjects should help it find a life beyond the festival circuit,” Anderson says. The documentary won a Jury award at the Berlin International Film Festival earlier this year.