With the completion of the Amiri & Aroha trilogy, my thoughts have been turning to my next project. Whilst my publishers constantly urge me to focus on finishing the novelisation of Amiri & Aroha, film making is so deeply engrained in my DNA that I a get very restless when I am without a film project.
Around the time of the New Zealand general election in September, I announced a new project on my blog. Child poverty was a major issue in the election campaign and watching some of the political debates stirred memories of a script I wrote some years back. Updated with an urban Māori setting and with the working title Hīkoi, my next film will be an uncompromising look at some troubling issues, wrapped up in a deeply affecting story.
Work on the novel has proved so all consuming in the intervening months that I have not had the time to develop the idea further. But it has been simmering away in the back of my mind and taking shape. With the Christmas holidays I have had a chance to cement these ideas and begin early preproduction. Watch out for a casting call and a Pledge Me campaign in the New Year.
Hīkoi promises to be a gritty, hard-hitting drama with an important message.