Escaping Utopia is another documentary about Gloriavale, the religious community that has attracted prying cameras for decades. But its makers say the three-part series finally tells the whole story.
When Natalie Malcon made Heaven and Hell – The Centrepoint Story, her devastating award-winning 2021 documentary about the survivors of sexual abuse at the rural Auckland commune led by Bert Potter, she had already considered her next cult hit.
It was Gloriavale. As a stern, strict fundamentalist Christian community in the West Coast wilderness, it might seem on a different spectrum to Potter’s semi-suburban free-love hippy fiefdom. But Malcon came to see the parallels.
“Making Centrepoint was the first time that I really got a deeper understanding of how these communities run, how they recruit people and what it’s like to live in a sort of coercive, controlling oppressive environment,” says Malcon.
“It was hearing the traumatic stories from former children of Centrepoint and the realisation that there are 350 children living in Gloriavale in New Zealand today. Something needs to be done.”
Heaven and Hell, with its adult accounts of life as a child in the commune, had found its way into Gloriavale. At least one of the Gloriavale women who appear in the three-part Escaping Utopia had seen Malcon’s documentary and been affected by it.
“We know that it was smuggled inside Gloriavale on phones to various people and one of our contributors watched it while she was still very much part of the Gloriavale community,” she says. “For her it was a big penny drop – that actually there would be people in the outside world who would understand her and that she could relate to, and before that she didn’t think there would be.”
But Gloriavale has not lacked for media attention over the years. The first episode of Escaping Utopia has veteran investigative reporter Melanie Reid looking back at when she went undercover in the community for TV3 current affairs in the early 1990s. The series also uses archive clips from Newshub, One News, Holmes and Country Calendar, as well as home video. And in recent years, several cases of physical and sexual abuse by Gloriavale men have been winding through the courts and into the news. And there have been two Employment Court cases and civil litigation by former members.
So why now?
“Well I think it’s been covered but not in a way that feels like it’s ever satisfied us,” says Justin Pemberton, Malcon’s co-director. Pemberton, best known for his documentaries on sporting greats (the Richie McCaw doco Chasing Great) and international issues (The Nuclear Comeback, Capital in the 21st Century) was a story consultant on Centrepoint.
“One thing that I don’t think has ever really been explored is the history of Gloriavale … what was it that attracted people? It was a utopian beginning. It was this idea that they were rejecting a very capitalist, very me-centric kind of world and trying to come up with sort of more communal living and sharing and all these really attractive ideas.”
With the backing of TVNZ and funding from the New Zealand Film Commission’s Premium Productions for International Audiences Fund, they had themselves a series. One which, as well as spending a fair amount on time on location in the West Coast, features cinema-quality re-creations of leavers’ stories about their lives in Gloriavale.
Pemberton says the dramatic scenes were added only after the documentary was shot “to make sure that it’s not the tail wagging the dog with the drama”.
“There were things that we just wanted to be able to bring alive that you just couldn’t do in any other way. It was shot and made to work with the other material, not to try and take it over but to take you further into the world.”
In Escaping Utopia, Gloriavale seems to exist in something of a misty Nordic-noir world, helped by the landscape and a brooding soundtrack by Andrew Keoghan featuring the voice of Reb Fountain.
Early in the first episode there’s a tense night-time drive to the community with Gloriavale leaver Pilgrim Christian, one of founder Hopeful Christian/Neville Cooper’s many children, at the wheel.
“Cross this bridge and you’ve lost your soul, you’re going to hell,” he says as his ute traverses the Haupiri River. “That’s the psychological prison. That is way more powerful than a locked gate.”
Malcon and Pemberton made the hour-long trip from Greymouth a few times, including once to ask the present elders if they would like to have their say after receiving no response to earlier requests. The Overseeing Shepherd took them on a tour and said he’d have to discuss any participation in the doco with the other male leaders. They said no a few days later.
The “no comment” wasn’t surprising but Pemberton says the filmed Employment Court testimony by Gloriavale women happy with their lot that they have used helped provide another perspective from inside the community.
“That’s a real richness and makes this different – we do get to hear both sides.”
The second and third episodes look at the experience of growing up in Gloriavale, the stories of couples who have left the community – many with their Christian faith and marriages intact. The final instalment contains “a bombshell”, says Malcon, that she can’t reveal until it goes to air.
Given the past performances of Gloriavale shows, it’s sure to rate its bonnets off. There has already been international interest given the show’s cult subject matter, high production values and that many in the community came from overseas.
Among those watching Escaping Utopia, Malcon hopes, will be community members. “The hope is people inside Gloriavale will watch this and maybe it will provoke something inside them. Maybe not immediately but down the track.”
Escaping Utopia is on TVNZ 1, Sunday, March 24, and Monday, March 25 at 8.30pm and Tuesday, March 26 at 8.45pm. Streaming on TVNZ+ from March 24.
