The gall of a teenage girl can be a behemoth of a thing — stubborn, melodramatic, hard-to-handle, and sometimes, it’s exactly what one needs to survive. Director Josephine Stewart-Te Whiu’s directorial feature debut, “We Were Dangerous,” takes place in 1954 Aotearoa, New Zealand, where Nellie (Erana James), Daisy (Manaia Hall) and Lou (Nathalie Morris) are forced to attend a residential reform school. These institutions were established by colonialist New Zealand, historically severing students from their native heritage and performing unethical medical experiments on them.
Nellie (James) and Daisy (Hall) are two Māori girls who were dealt a bad hand, with unfair and uncontrollable circumstances leading to a, (quite tame), pastry shop robbery, an arrest and eventual enrollment in a school for “troubled” girls. There, they meet Lou (Morris), a rich white student whose parents have wiped their hands clean after learning about her queerness. In a flash, the three become an unshakeable trio, no matter how hard the matron (Rima Te Wiata) tries to squander their bond.
Character Media sat down with director Stewart-Te Whiu, writer Maddie Dai and producer Morgan Waru to discuss the making and themes of the film and why we all could use more art that champions the teenage girl spirit.
Character Media: We all have different roles here. How did you feel, Josephine, being at the helm of this project as director?
Josephine Stewart-Te Whiu: It was terrifying not going to lie. I have previously done short films or collaborated on long format. You definitely get a bit of “Imposter Syndrome.” You [also] think you know more than you do, [and] enter into it with blind confidence that you’re gonna be fine and everything’s gonna be amazing.
CM: It’s big, and then at some point, you realize…
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