Purpose over popcorn. If actor Cliff Curtis were to be defined by a phrase or mantra, that wouldn't be a bad place to start.
Curtis — the stratospherically successful and critically acclaimed actor — may have a back catalogue of diverse roles and franchises, and a solid global reputation, but it's social history; the gritty, uncomfortable truths about Aotearoa that gives him purpose and meaning; smaller films that will resonate and have a strong impact on local audiences.
Hollywood projects, he says, are distractions and the films he makes here, fulfilling.
"It's great to come home to work as opposed to making popcorn films, which are all about CGI and entertainment. It's good for me to come home because I get to work on movies that affect our social understanding of who we are as a nation. That's what feeds and nurtures me as a storyteller and an artist."
He came home to film Muru, a profoundly moving, high-paced drama that tackles the 2007 police raids on Tūhoe, a large iwi nestled deep in the heart of the Te Urewera forest in the Bay of Plenty.
Early on the morning of October 15, about 300 armed police - including the Armed Offenders Squad - swooped on the people of Tūhoe, responding to suspicions of a domestic terrorist camp operating in Te Urewera.
At dawn, the police raided homes, detained innocent people and traumatised whānau and tamariki. Seventeen people were arrested but only four people were convicted on firearms charges raids, including Tūhoe artist and activist, Tame Iti. The police were forced to apologise after an Independent Police Conduct Authority found the searches in Tūhoe were unlawful, unjustified, and unreasonable.
More than 100 years earlier, in 1916, another unlawful police raid on Tūhoe occurred after prophet Rua Kenana Hepetipa was arrested on charges relating to the illegal sale of alcohol. It's believed the Government at the time saw the charges as a chance to punish Kenana for opposing the recruitment of Tūhoe men into the military. Kenana was pardoned and the Government apologised in 2019, more than a century after the raids.
"I distinctively remember when the Government declared domestic terrorism in 2007. I knew straight away that it was a farce, it was nonsense, a circus. A police apology was required," Curtis says.
He says Muru is an important film because it's a response to the police raids and the unjust treatment of Māori. He says the trauma of the event took years for the people of Tūhoe to heal from and he hopes the film will help prevent history from repeating.
"We have a reason to tell the story. Look what's happening in the world today. We are going back and rehashing old patterns of behaviour. America looks like it's on the brink of revolution and in civil distress, Russia is at war with Ukraine. You have to ask yourself; 'How could this be happening? Why is humanity having to go back and make the same mistakes all over again?'
"It's easy for people to say, 'This will never happen here.' But it did happen here. It happened in Tūhoe, more than once. If we are complacent to believe that this won't happen again, then that will be on us for not being vigilant against the weaker aspect of human nature."
Curtis (Te Arawa and Ngāti Hauiti) is so busy these days that he manages to squeeze in a time to speak to Canvas in a Zoom interview from his car in the bush near his home in Rotorua. The next day he's off to Italy, jet-setting around the world to shoot films and television shows.
He is discreet about his private life, is notoriously guarded about his wife and four children, rarely speaking about them in public. But he can't resist revealing that he named his youngest son Aroha.
"He's gorgeous. There was much debate whether he should have that name. I knew it was the right name for him because he's beautiful."
In Muru, Curtis plays community police officer and school bus driver Sergeant Taffy Tawharau who gets caught in the middle of all of the drama. The film is directed and written by his good friend Tearepa Kahi, who directed the documentary on the iconic song Poi E and Mt Zion, starring Stan Walker and Temuera Morrison. They shot the film at pivotal locations, where the raids impacted, like the bridge in Rūātoki and the confiscation line, where the police set up roadblocks.
Muru, which also stars Manu Bennett, Simone Kessell and Jay Ryan, is not based on facts. The director made the tough decision to create a fictionalised account inspired by the events surrounding the 2007 raids but also informed by the 1916 raids. This film, says Kahi, is a creative response to the raids. It's visceral and powerful storytelling.
"Tearepa was very clear going in that he didn't want to make a documentary because that had already been done," says Curtis. "He wanted to make a film that people could go to the cinemas and see. I think he has achieved that."
Kahi did, however, cast activist Tame Iti as the central figure of the raids, with Iti playing himself.
Curtis, 54, has been mates with Iti for decades and says the film gives people an opportunity to see a different, very human side of the Tūhoe activist.
"What I knew of Tame, was first and foremost, as an artist, a painter, a performer, and an activist. He performs activism in his art. He's an artist who also happens to be a political agitator. The government chose to profile him and his work within the community as a domestic terrorist. This was shameful and unnecessary.
"It was beautiful to act alongside him and see him extend his artistry. Not many people are aware but Tame is a performer who has travelled the world in dance and performing arts. It seems like a natural progression for him to act in movies. Then again, who could you possibly cast to play Tame? I don't think you can find anyone to play Tame, but Tame."
Curtis was born in Paraparaumu, raised on the Kapiti Coast and lives in Rotorua. He's one of nine children and developed a love for performance from his father, who was an amateur dancer. Curtis is also a former competitor in breakdancing and rock 'n' roll dance competitions.
His feature film debut was in the cult New Zealand classic Desperate Remedies, alongside Jennifer Te Atamira Ward-Lealand, Lisa Chappell, and the late Kevin Smith. After his breakthrough role, as "Uncle F***en Billy" in Once Were Warriors in 1994, Hollywood beckoned. He's worked with a long list of A-listers including Martin Scorsese, Johnny Depp, Harrison Ford, Eddie Murphy, and Dwayne Johnson.
He has played characters from a staggering variety of ethnicities, including Mexican, Colombian, Arab, Persian, and Chechen. When he was cast in Muru, he spent time with the people of Tūhoe as part of his research and had to learn their distinct dialect and way of speaking te reo Māori. In Tūhoe, they do not pronounce the letter "g".
Curtis describes his rēo Māori competency as "kohanga rēo level" and cherished the time he spent with the elders of Tūhoe to strengthen his own language skills.
"Being around their rēo and listening to them was so beautiful. I saw the way the language lives in that area, their connection to the land, and how it makes them distinctive from another iwi.
"The further you go up the valley, the slower they speak. The closer you get to the port, where there's a gateway to others, the rhythm and the intonations of the way they speak changes and shifts. There was a beautiful musicality and rhythm to it. I adored being surrounded by that."
As part of his research, Curtis also spent time with Māori police officers in the area, to gain an insight into how they were impacted by the 2007 raids.
"They were shut out of the process. They didn't know what was happening. They weren't allowed to know because they were considered to be too close. They just woke up one morning and it was on," he says.
"There was a perception that they had duped their own people, that they had withheld information from their own whānau and the community that they served, that they loved and cared about. The situation was very hurtful for them."
Muru opens in cinemas across the country in September. For now, Curtis has returned to working on "popcorn" projects. He's currently starring in the Avatar movies, helmed by James Cameron, and he's been cast in the big-budget Netflix series Kaos, a dark comedy, and a contemporary retelling of Greek mythology.
Working on international films and seeing how the industry functions has motivated Curtis to not only act in films but also produce them – especially films about Māori and told by Māori.
He saw the importance of Māori storytelling while working on the critically acclaimed film, Whale Rider, a beloved Māori story that was directed and produced by non-Māori.
"I distinctively remember being on the set of Whale Rider at a marae on the East Coast. There were these tents set up for the kuia to sit there so they could watch the footage being filmed. As much as I loved the interaction and the context of it, there was something that didn't sit right with me. When we packed up the film and we all went away, Whale Rider was packaged and sold and it belongs to someone else. If any of those kuia wanted an image of themselves in that film, they would have to buy it back. That seemed wrong to me. But if we make our own films, we don't have to ask permission to have our image of our kuia back."
Curtis was also a co-producer on Taika Waititi's Boy and, with Chelsea Winstanley, he produced a documentary on Māori film-maker Merata Mita, directed by her son Heperi. Curtis has various other Māori films in development.
"It's crucial for Māori to tell and own our own stories. Not only do I think we can do it differently but we can do it better. Why shouldn't we participate in a level of ownership? Why are we supporting people who don't have a clue about us and have to ask us to explain to them who we are and they get to have the final say? I think there's something perverse about this process," he says.
"I thought I better get out from in front of the camera and get behind it and learn the mechanics of how we get into the ownership of our own intellectual property. Māori have had huge losses in terms of our land, in terms of our resources, in terms of our language. The next thing we can lose is our intellectual property."
He's passionate about empowering Māori and is motivated to advocate for change in the film industry because of his children.
"When we pass on and we are no longer here as individuals, we can hand it on to our mokopuna. They don't have to go around and a find an archive and ask permission from some other entity to get access to a story that is there's all along."
He says his children also give him the inspiration to return to Aotearoa to make films like Muru.
"One day when my kids grow up and they are looking at Muru, they can say, 'That's a different kind of film. Why would you do a movie like that when you could have stayed in Hollywood?' So, for my tamariki, for my mokopuna, for my whānau, Muru is substantial and is important in terms of my collective body of work."
Muru is released in cinemas on September 1.
