Vai (2019)

There's a moment in Vai where you stop thinking about the structure and just surrender to it. Seven chapters, seven directors, seven Pacific nations, one name carried like a torch from childhood to old age. It sounds like it could be a mess. It isn't. It's one of the more quietly remarkable things I've watched on my A-Z World Movie Tour, and it counts for Niue and about six other nations besides.

The concept is deceptively simple: follow a character named Vai at different stages of her life, across different islands, with a different filmmaker at the helm for each segment. Fiji, Aotearoa, Tonga, Samoa and more. Each story is self-contained, told in its own language, rooted in its own traditions. And yet the whole thing flows. That's the achievement here. What could have felt like a sampler platter ends up feeling like a complete meal. The same spirit moves through every chapter, even as the landscapes, dialects and rhythms shift around her.

What gives Vai its real weight is who made it. These aren't outsiders peering in with a tourist's eye. Every director is an Indigenous Pacific woman telling stories drawn from her own cultural reality. You feel it in every frame. The salt air, the textures of daily life, the unspoken hierarchies and tender connections between women of different generations. It doesn't perform its authenticity; it simply has it. That's rarer than it should be. I was reminded of how much I responded to Mustang for similar reasons, that sense of a story told from the inside out, by people with genuine skin in the game.

Each segment captures a different stage of life: childhood curiosity, the friction of adolescence, adult responsibility, elder wisdom. Together they build something like a full-circle portrait of what it means to grow up as a Pacific woman, shaped by land, community and ancestral connection. It's not melodramatic about any of this. The emotion earns itself quietly, which makes the moments that land hit all the harder.

Is it flawless? No. Pacing varies between segments, and a couple of the chapters feel more sketched than fully realised compared to the strongest ones. In an anthology, that's almost inevitable. When you've got seven different directors, you're going to get seven different levels of polish and seven different senses of narrative completeness. A few feel like they end just as they're getting interesting. But I'd rather have an uneven film with this much heart and honesty than a smoothly produced one with nothing particular to say.

I also want to flag that if you're making your way through Pacific cinema, Vai pairs well with Aho'eitu, which I've also covered here. They're very different in tone and approach, but both are valuable windows into Pacific storytelling that doesn't get nearly enough attention in mainstream film culture.

Three and a half stars.

Vai is a cultural document as much as it is a piece of entertainment, and I mean that as a genuine compliment. It's a film that celebrates identity, the bond between women across generations, and the kind of resilience that doesn't need to announce itself. Pacific cinema deserves a much bigger audience than it gets, and this is as good a place as any to start.

Rating: ★★★½  | Year: 2019  | Watched: 2025-08-03

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Where to watch

Watch in the UK
Stream: Amazon Prime Video · Amazon Prime Video with Ads
Physical: Amazon UK · Zavvi

Watch in the US
Stream: Amazon Prime Video · Amazon Prime Video with Ads
Rent: Amazon Video · Apple TV Store · Google Play Movies · YouTube
Buy: Amazon Video · Apple TV Store · Google Play Movies · YouTube
Physical: Amazon US

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Related on Movies With Macca

More from New Zealand: What We Do in the Shadows (2014) · Mortal Engines (2018) · King Kong (2005) · 'Aho'eitu (2015)
More from the 2010s: Wonder (2017) · Beautiful Boy (2018) · The Witch (2015) · What We Do in the Shadows (2014)
More drama: Viy (1967) · Wonder (2017) · A Better Tomorrow (1986) · Beautiful Boy (2018)