Cousins

Well I just had my heart gently pulled from my chest and handed to me wrapped in tissue. "Cousins" was as enchanting and heartbreaking as I could have hoped. So beautifully directed, intimately and cleverly told, weaving 3 narratives and 3 timelines and somehow never losing a thread. It will stay with me a long while. I loved it.

Honestly the most beautiful film I've seen in years. At the end I'd say over a third of the cinema was crying. What a powerful story!

This was one of the most touching, and yet difficult to watch films I've seen in a long time. It makes me think long and hard about the pain, suffering, and tremendous damage my colonial ancestors caused to indigenous people all around the world.

A film with a lot of heart (and a lot of plot holes).

Worth seeing.

Perhaps it needed a bit more time / budget.

This really captured my interest because it is a story of the experiences of our Maori people but I find it rather fragmented and does not go into the details of what happened to these women. It would have been better as a series describing more and connecting the timelines.

As it is. It is very poignant but not deep enough. It was just scratching the surface and does not explain so many things and leaves me with so many questions. Like why did Mata become homeless when she had a job?

Their life stories are poorly explained and more like raptured memoirs in a dream like state and does not capture the essences of their hurt loss of connection. The cousins alienation from one another and their separation from their land. Maybe a more personal narrative focused more on the total lifestory of one of the girls. It was just too short.