Most people probably wouldn’t find the idea of broken homes, drug abuse and living below the poverty line fodder for a particularly amusing comedy film. But Eagle Vs. Shark director TAIKA WAITITI has never shied away from mixing a bit of drama in with his comedy, and in his new film BOY, he tackles the big issues head-on. ANTHONY GOUGH reports.

Boy follows the struggles of a Maori kid called Boy (James Rolleston) growing up in the ‘80s on a dilapidated farm in New Zealand, where he looks after his little brother and his abandoned cousins. Boy is a bratty little dreamer who copes with the problems in his life by slipping into a fantasy world, where his little brother has magical powers and his absent father is an international adventurer rather than a hopelessly inadequate, volatile alcoholic.

Although Boy brushes up against some nasty themes like child neglect and drug abuse, it never loses sight of its humanity and warmth. “Just because a film’s about child neglect doesn’t mean it should be like that film Nobody Knows where it’s just constantly depressing images of kids alone and being sad,” Waititi says. “I don’t think kids are really like that.”

Boy has something of a DIY, homegrown feel about it, filled with New Zealand slang, pop culture references and the thickest Maori accents you’ll hear outside the Land of the Long White Cloud. Despite this, or maybe because of it, Boy has played well to an international audience, picking up an award at the Berlin International Film Festival and a nomination at Sundance, where its young star received a standing ovation for his performance. “Everyone internationally has ‘got’ the film,” Waititi says, although he says some countries like it for different reasons. “Funnily in America they find it a little more tragic than a comedy,” he says. “They don’t find child neglect as funny as we do. Quite sensitive over there.”

“Funnily in America they find it a little more tragic than a comedy. They don’t find child neglect as funny as we do. Quite sensitive over there.”

Waititi jokes about it, but it’s clear that hidden behind his self-deprecating humour is a deep, personal pride in his latest film. It’s not surprising, given it’s based on his own personal experience of growing up in the tiny tight-knit Maori community of Raukokore in Waihau Bay. “The story’s made up, but I don’t really know any other areas that I could have shot it in,” Waititi says.

Waititi wrote the film specifically about his hometown, including places from his childhood like his old school, the corner store and the house he grew up in, trying to keep as close as possible to his memories. Luckily for him when it came to filming, not much had changed. “It’s all pretty authentic. The school that we shot at, when I was at school there as a kid in the mid-‘80s there were 30 kids there, and when we shot there last year there were 28. So two of us escaped,” he says.

Getting the voice and attitude of kids from the Bay right was so important to Waititi that in the end, despite a nation-wide call out, he assembled a cast mainly made up of non-actors from the neighbouring areas and his own extended family. “I wanted to cast non-actors and kids that were local, because it just had to feel real,” he says.

Realism is at the heart of Boy, and Waititi says he wanted to offer a more realistic portrayal of Maoris than the brutal negativity of Once Were Warriors and the spiritualism of Whale Rider. This, he says, is important not only for an international audience, but for Maoris themselves.

“For the Maori community, it is important that they see themselves in a different way and understand that they can be funny and they can kind of laugh at some of these things,” he says. “To be able to laugh at ourselves is a very important thing, and out of the darkest situations, that’s where the brightest stuff happens.”

BOY opens in cinemas on Thursday Aug 26, rated [M]. www.boythemovie.co.nz

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