Review: Whale Rider (PG)

THIS gem of a film is an unlikely but marvellous success story that has swept away awards at film festivals across the seven seas.

A film from New Zealand, it is a contemporary tale about a Maori tribe's fight to maintain its traditions and mythology in the modern world.

It focuses on a young Maori girl's struggle to convince her grandfather that she is destined and has been chosen to lead the tribe into a new age.

And here is the wonderful paradox, for although it is a story about how cultures fight against change and modernity, the reason that Pai (a superb performance by Keisha Castle-Hughes) is rejected as the tribe's leader- in-waiting by her grandfather Koro, the chief, is because the role of a woman is perceived as being secondary to a man's.

This Maori community believes they are the descendants of the whale rider Paikea and they are in need of a new spiritual leader.

When Pai's twin brother dies in childbirth and their father abandons the tribe the search goes on for a male to take the place of Koro.

Pai, fiercely proud of her heritage, embraces every aspect of Maori culture and is convinced she is the chosen one who will lead the tribe out of darkness.

It is a truly remarkable, fascinating insight into a culture that finds itself at odds with the world today, as portrayed in another superb New Zealand film Once Were Warriors.

Never patronising, over-simplified or moralising, it hits all the right buttons until, arguably, right at the end, when it could have been slightly less romanticised.

Nonetheless it is one of the finest films of the year.

Mono rating: 8 out of 10

Now showing at the UGC Cinema Cardiff