An interview with Miki Magasiva, director of TINĀ
7 Feb 2025
Tinā, a heartwarming, choir-themed Kiwi film, will be released in cinemas throughout Aotearoa in just a few weeks.
The film tells the story of Samoan teacher Mareta Percival who, struggling with a huge loss after the 2011 Christchurch earthquake, takes up a substitute position at an elite private school and forms a choir there, helping her students — and herself — to heal through music.
Tinā is a celebration of collective singing and its power to bring us together in joy and in grief. Here at NZCF, we're especially excited to see The Big Sing, our secondary schools choral festival, have its moment on the big screen!
We sat down with Miki Magasiva, who wrote, directed and produced Tinā, to chat about working with choral singers on screen, the bonds we build through music, and what audiences can expect at the premieres across the motu.
Has choir always been a big part of your life, or is it something that grew on you as you worked on this film?
When I first embarked on this film, choir wasn’t a big part of my life. But when I started piecing the film together, I soon discovered that historically it actually had been… that, in fact, choir and choral music plays a really large part in Samoan culture. I’d just completely forgotten that when I would go to church every Sunday, choir was a massive part of it. All of our masses have strong choral elements to them; all of our communities have Samoan choirs.
And so going back and reliving my past, and researching old Samoan music, and then really connecting that to more modern choral arrangements — delving into the wonderful performances at The Big Sing over the years and realising how massive it was — sort of brought that back up again. I don’t know whether that’s something I’m going to focus on going forward, but it did bring up a passion for music and choir, and for that part of the community that I hadn’t been in touch with before.
I suppose when it’s an everyday thing, you might not recognise choral music as something particularly extraordinary — but it can be such a warm part of your memory, even if you didn’t take a whole lot of notice at the time.
One of the things I hope the film does is not only introduce some people to the choral world, but remind people that it is such a large part of our community, right? Thousands of students come out of The Big Sing every single year and go out into the community and the workforce, and I think a lot of those people forget about that part of their life.
I’ve spoken to so many ex-Big Sing students who had such an amazing time going through the competition, choir being an amazing experience in their life, having been exposed to all different kinds of music and cultures while they were in it. They look back at that time fondly. I hope the movie is able to remind people of those times, so they can start talking about it again and remember that it’s a really strong part of our community.
I’m talking like I’m changing the world — I definitely am not! But when we started pitching the movie out to people, we’d go, "Oh, we’re doing a choral movie." And then every single person would come out of the woodwork and say, "Oh yeah, I was in choir!" or "I’m a choral girl", "I’m a choral guy", "We just took our kids to their Big Sing rehearsal" — like, it’s everywhere.
Most of Tinā’s on-screen choir were from choral backgrounds — that’s how they became a part of the film. And you worked with a few different choral directors too. Were there any surprises in that process?
I was very keen to have a strong contingent of choral singers in the movie. I knew I could back that up with extras, but I went out hoping — and gunning hard — to try and get real choral singers. Luckily we were able to do that, through Igelese [Ete], who connected us to David Squire. David was responsible for bringing together our film choir through his connections as the director of the New Zealand Youth Choir and Auckland Youth Choir. Everybody in the choir community knows David! And when he brought his people on to do the choral elements of our film, we reached out and asked them if they’d be keen to come on board [for the filmed scenes], and most of them were happy to do that.
So when people ask, "Who sang the songs?" I proudly announce that everybody that you see on screen is involved in singing those songs in the movie. It was a joy to have them board. When you bring on people who aren’t used to film, it can be a nerve-wracking environment for them to go into. Often you have to really nurture newbies into the film world — but I seriously didn’t have to do that with any of those choral singers. It was like they’d been on television multiple times before! They’re all so smart, and maybe they had just been in those choral situations before, so I would give them a direction, and they’d be like, "Of course, that makes sense…" They had that experience of being on stage and performing.
The film deals beautifully with young people navigating cultural experiences outside of what is ‘normal’ for them, beyond what they’re comfortable with. Do you think music is something that helps us connect across cultures?
Absolutely. I think anyone who is a musician, or loves music, or has been in the music world, knows the healing and connecting properties of music. This film feeds into that idea. It’s really about inclusion, about acceptance of other people’s cultures, about parenting… about bringing different groups together. Whether that’s adults and students, or one culture to another culture, or whether it’s somebody who is hurt finding a connection with somebody else who is hurt. Music is such a connecting force across all these themes at play in the film.
I tried really hard to take out a lot of the dialogue in the movie, and to have the connection between Mareta and Sophie (played by Anapela Polataivao and Antonia Robinson) made not through words but through their connection to music. They’re both musicians, and they can identify that in each other. I’ve tried to make music the bonding agent between characters and themes and storylines — because all musically inclined people, which I think is all of us, can understand that.
There’s more than just words, isn’t there? We always talk about vibrations and frequency, and I like that idea that there are other ways to connect with other human beings that are outside of words. I’m so proud that in the film it’s often just a look between the characters — they recognize exactly what the other person is going through, whether that’s Sophie’s physical scars or Mareta’s mental scars. I’d like to think it’s a musical bond that brings them together initially.
What has the festival experience been like with this film? How has that reception and connection felt?
You go through the range of emotions, you know. There’s always nervousness when the movie’s about to play, and the first scene comes up. I’m always, always nervous. And as the movie goes along, people start to dial into the story, and you can hear a gasp or a laugh — and obviously you can’t see people crying because you’re in the theatre, but you can tell those emotional moments, because you’ll often hear coughing and sniffling. All of those reactions give you confidence, and you start to feel a whole lot better.
Once the movie is over, everybody’s elated, having been through quite an emotional journey. So to be there and have the audience come up to you and communicate not only how overwhelming the film was, but how much they enjoyed it — that’s the reason I do this. I don’t do this just to try to be arty or creative, though there’s a lot of that when you’re piecing it together. But the most joy I get is when people come up to me and have had a reaction. That’s the best feeling in the world.
I know you have some choirs singing at the premieres — tell us more about that!
It is a choir movie, so we were very keen to have one choir per city that we’re holding a premiere in: Auckland, Christchurch and Wellington.
We’re ecstatic to have Choralation and [director] Fiona Wilson performing at our Auckland premiere — that choir inspired the movie and played a big part in it, so it's like a full-circle moment for them to perform. And we have a couple of other choirs performing in Wellington and Christchurch too; we’re excited about that.
We always try to do something a little bit special at the premiere. People have paid a bit more money than they usually would at the movie theatre to come along, so we want to honour that and the movie by having some choirs performing. And you know what it’s like... there’s nothing like a live performance!
Tinā is in cinemas across Aotearoa from 27 February. Find a showing near you — or head along to one of the premiere screenings in Auckland, Christchurch or Wellington!