Bonds of family, kinship and identity resonate in Cousins, a New Zealand film about three Māori women who briefly knew each other as children, before separating to live vastly different lives. While the film shifts perspectives and moves continually to and from various time periods to capture the intertwining lives of all three women across multiple decades, the focus of the film is on Mata. Quiet and troubled even at an early age, Mata’s story of neglect and abuse is a sad portrayal of the invisibility of people in society who fall through the cracks and a sobering reflection on the colonial trauma inflicted by systemic racism.
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CINEMA AUTOPSY 