Ways To See is Manawanui’s debut film performance. However she is no stranger to the mechanics of film-making and performing arts – her mother is award winning singer songwriter, Moana Maniapoto and her father, Toby Mills, is an award-winning film and television director.

 

Manawanui’s performance was coached by actor Hori Ahipene and will no doubt be the first of many on-screen appearances.

Awhina-Rose Henare Ashby grew up in the Bay of Islands with te reo Māori as her first language. She graduated from Toi Whakaari:New Zealand Drama School in 2010. Since then she has taken on a range of roles on stage and screen, including; a Māori language version of Troilus and Cressida (2011-12) directed by Rachel House at the Globe Theatre and took the stage in the 2015 NZ Festival production – Marama, by The Conch Theatre Company.

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Ashby made her feature film debut in the ensemble drama Waru, playing “Em” directed by Katie Wolfe, which debuted at the 2017 NZ International Film Festival. In 2017 she played “Karen” in the tele-feature Resolve. Ashby continues to share her comedic talents in a reoccurring role on the Māori Television hit The Ring Inz.

A graduate of Toi Whakaari: New Zealand Drama School. Jodie’s screen credits include The Inland Road, Daffodils, Ash vs Evil Dead, The Women’s Vote, The Brokenwood Mysteries, Nothing Trivial, and lead roles in the 2018 short film Milk, and the independent feature Blind Panic – currently in post-production.

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In 2019 she appeared on New Zealand screens as a lead role in the new TVNZ drama The Bad Seed and in the German-New Zealand co-production The Gulf. Some of her stage credits include Silo Theatre’s Tribes, Danny and the Deep Blue Sea, The Seagull, After Miss Julie and Homeland; which won Jodie The 2007 Chapman Award for “Best Female Newcomer”.

Troy Kingi is an award-winning musician and actor. He released his debut solo album Guitar Party At Uncles Bach in 2016. The Kerikeri based performer has acted in many films, including Taika Waititi’s Hunt For The Wilderpeople, and won the APRA Silver Scroll Maioha Award in 2015 for his song with Stan Walker Aotearoa.

 

Kingi’s album Shake That Skinny Ass All The Way To Zygertron, is a sprawling sci-fi soul odyssey inspired by interstellar love, mystic prophesy, and 70s cosmic funk artists Funkadelic.

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Kingi has just released his new album, Holy Colony Burning Acres. Featuring a new incarnation of his band the Upperclass, the album delves into the dark corners of worldly Indigenous politics, namely colonisation and its crippling effects on today’s social climate.