ABOUT
A canoe trip down the Whanganui River in New Zealand, led by a Māori elder, awakens spiritual belief and practice, and becomes a call to action to draw closer to nature and fight climate change through a fundamental value shift.
The Whanganui River in Aotearoa/New Zealand is the first river in the world to be recognized as a legal person, as a living and indivisible being.
Māori river guardian Ned Tapa invites a First Nations Elder from Australia and his daughter, who are activists dedicated to saving their own dying river back home, on a five-day canoe trip down this sacred river. Joining them are Ned’s friends, his family, an international film crew and Ned’s dog Jimmy.
For the Māori, the Whanganui is a living being – their ancestor. This belief has been institutionalized by New Zealand law as of 2017. Granting the river legal personhood is a way of environmental protection for the river, and as a way of legally validating the Māori worldview.
The film is an invitation to experience these values: of thinking about our relationship to the world around us – to above all the natural world – as one of intergenerational care and guardianship rather than just ownership/use/extraction.
The film is the result of a four-year long collaboration with the Māori community in Whanganui.
The filmmakers read about the granting of personhood rights to the Whanganui River when it was world news in 2017. The story captured their attention and they travelled to Aotearoa New Zealand, where they had the good fortune to meet river guardian and Māori community leader Ned Tapa. They made a short film together with him about the river, and the result was one of the most watched short documentaries broadcasts in the Netherlands, on NPO2Doc-Kort. The idea of personhood rights for nature clearly resonated with a big audience.
They had struck up a friendship with Ned Tapa, and he suggested they return to make a longer film together. He had also recently met a visiting young Australian artist who worked with First Nations’ Australians, and she wondered if Ned would like to invite a group of First Nations Australians advocating for the rights of their rivers in Australia to travel down the Whanganui River together. This is how the idea for the long film was born.
Ned Tapa and Puoro Jerome have been deeply involved in working together with the filmmakers as cultural advisors through all stages of the production.
Ned Tapa
Ned Tapa is a Māori community leader living in Whanganui, New Zealand. He is a kaitakitaki, or cultural advisor/educator for the Whanganui District Health Board. A Whanganui River guardian, he is on the river almost every day.
Desmond Canterbury
A Māori relation and friend of Ned, Des works in community mental health with the Tupoho Iwi Community and Social Services in Whanganui.
Stewart Reweti
A Māori relation and close friend of Ned, after thirty years working in correctional services in Whanganui, Stu has just now retired and is enjoying life.
Brendan Kennedy
A Tati Tati, Latju Latju, Weki Weki, Wadi Wadi, Mutti Mutti, Yita Yita, Nari Nari Elder, Brendan is a Sovereign Traditional Owner of his Country. His connection to my country is as strong and deep like the roots of old Murray River Red Gum tree. He is a a river man belonging to the Millu (Murray River) since time memorial dating back over 100,000 years.
Brendan is the current Co-Chair of the Victorian Aboriginal Corporation for Language; a Tati Tati delegate and Vice Chair of Murray Lower Darling Rivers Indigenous Nations (MLDRIN) where he has been instrumental in elevating the profile of First Nations Water Rights in the Murray Darling Basin, through his river rights NGO Tati Tati Kaiejin.
Melissa Kennedy
Melissa Kennedy is a Tati Tati woman from the Murray River Country in North-West Victoria, Australia. She is co-founder and CEO of Tati Tati Kaiejin, a grass-roots Indigenous owned and operated not-for-profit organisation. Melissa’s aim is to uplift First Nations people and support sustainable environmental practices through the progression, restoration and replenishment of culture and Country. She is also Tati Tati Aboriginal Water Officer, working with local communities to support river restoration projects and creating space for traditional knowledge gathering and sharing.
Justine Muller
Justine Muller is a multi disciplined, award winning artist. The goddaughter of one of Australia’s most recognised environmental activists, she often uses her practice to draw attention to important environmental and political issues with a focus on water and human rights. She has worked with Australian First Nations communities for a long time. She is represented by Nanda Hobbs Gallery, Sydney and her work is in the public collections of the Victoria Mildura Art Centre, Maitland Regional gallery, Nock Art Foundation, Macquarie Art Collection and Sydney City Archives. Her most recent exhibit was “Barka, The Forgotten River” at the The Australian Museum in Sydney.
Kanui Tapa
Kanui, Ned’s grandson, is a Maori community activist working together with disadvantaged youth in Whanganui.
Jimmy the Dog
Jimmy is Ned’s dog.
Richard Sidey
Richard Sidey is an award-winning conservation, adventure and wildlife filmmaker based in the South Island of New Zealand.
Richard formed his career specialising in environmental filmmaking and nature photography, documenting the polar regions, remote wilderness areas and their wildlife for over a decade before co-founding the New Zealand based production company Galaxiid in 2016.
He is drone operator and 2nd unit camera in I AM THE RIVER, THE RIVER IS ME.
Ad Stoop
Born in Zevenbergen, Nederland and living in Asker, Norway, Ad stoop is one of Norway’s most esteemed production sound recordists,with a track record spanning more than 90 films and documentaries, including Lars van Trier’s Breaking the Waves, Festen, and Dancer in the Dark, to major Norwegian feature films and Netflix series such as The Vikings.
Tahuaroa Ohia
Tahu is a young Maori sound recordist. Working at Māoriland he is also a filmmaker and animation artist.
Corinne van Egeraat & Petr Lom
Are a filmmaking couple, and the producer and director’s of this film.
COMPOSER
Grammy award-winning composer Puoro Jerome is one of the most prolific practitioners of Taonga Pūoro Māori.
In the film, you will see him composing the film's score along the banks of the Whanganui River.
Jerome Kavanagh Poutama (Puoro Jerome) is an established producer and composer of Taonga Puoro music for film, television series and commercial campaigns both in Aotearoa, New Zealand and Internationally. Jerome and his whānau of Puoro – “Te Tini a Haa” have toured extensively all over the world, performing at New York’s Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center, the Sydney Opera House and the British Museum.
He was a featured solo artist and lyricist on the two-time Grammy award-winning album Calling All Dawns for his track Kia Hora te Marino recorded at Abbey Road studios, with the London Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. Over the past decade Jerome has also been sharing the “ORO ATUA” (a Māori sound journey experience) reviving the ancient indigenous practice of Taonga Puoro as rongoā (healing) providing workshops for schools and communities throughout the country and worldwide.
OUR MANIFESTO
Together with our protagonists, we've written a manifesto: a call to action for unity and environmental stewardship.
The Whanganui Māori proverb, recognizing the river as their ancestor and as a living spiritual being, says: Ko au te awa, ko te awa ko au. I am the river and the river is me.
The proverb teaches us about our fundamental interconnection with nature: the environment and a people are one and the same. They cannot be separated. And so there is a responsibility to protect the river’s integrity and lifeforce. A responsibility that is non-negotiable.
This proverb does not apply only to the Māori and to the Whanganui River.
We need to bring about a value shift: in how we all – everyone in the world – relate to nature and to each other.
It is time to recognize that we are all the river, and the river is us.
Now that our world is on fire, rights for all that lives and climate justice are more crucial than ever. It is time to act.
IMPACT
For the sake of future human and non-human generations, it is time for a new nature inclusive democracy, a new narrative in which non-human life forms are effectively represented.
We believe the film I Am The River, The River is Me can help pass eco laws and validate the work of nature rights activists, policymakers, politicians, and NGOs: to help create unity, a change in values and contribute to the understanding of the significance of indigenous and local knowledge for a sustainable relationship with aquatic ecosystems.
To recognize our dependency on healthy water, of a healthy relationship with water – of guardianship versus ownership, and ultimately of ourselves being water in all that is life.
What you can do
You can organize a screening and/or event around the rights of nature in your community together with us. If you are in the Netherlands, book through our distributor CineDeli. See our list of impact ambassadors for your own tailor-made event.
To book an international screening, contact our distributor Journeyman.
What we're doing
We are collaborating with one of the world’s leading impact production companies, THINK-FILM to mobilise policymakers on the rights of nature. We’re trying take the film to the COP30 – the United Nations Conference on Climate Change in Belem in Brazil this November. Stay tuned!
CREDITS
Out of respect for the river, the filmmakers have recognized The Whanganui River as one of the co-producers of the film.
Director and cinematographer Petr Lom
Producer Corinne van Egeraat
Co-producer Mette Cheng Munthe-Kaas
Editor Gys Zevenbergen NCE
Sound design and mix Mark Glynne & Olmo van Straalen
Māori taonga puoro artist Puoro Jerome
Māori music composer Puoro Jerome
Sami music composer Georg Buljo
Sound Ad Stoop & Tahuora Ohia
2nd unit camera Richard Sidey
Grading Michiel Rummens
Image postproduction Jan Jaap Kuiper
Line producer Natasja Möhrs
Script Consultant Tamara Vuurmans
A ZINDOC production, in coproduction with the Whanganui River (Aotearoa/New Zealand), Ten Thousand Images (Norway) and KRO-NCRV/de Boeddhistische Blik (the Netherlands)
With the support of:
The Netherlands Film Fund
The NPO Fund
Norwegian Film Institute
Fritt Ord
Netherlands Distributor: Cinema Delicatessen
FESTIVAL & CINEMA SCREENINGS
Newsletter
THE FILMMAKERS
Filmmakers Corinne van Egeraat & Petr Lom Corinne are an internationally recognized filmmaking couple whose award-winning work has premiered at Berlin, Venice, IDFA and Sundance and has screened at over 450 festivals around the world and broadcast in more than 30 countries.
They are both members of the Academy of Motion Picture Art & Sciences and are New Zealand Edward Hillary Fellows, an international fellowship dedicated to global impact.
They are driven by the need for creative storytelling in the service of movies that matter. Specializing in urgent stories that reflect their values of dedication to justice, they work from a deep place of humility and generosity seeing storytelling as form of love and friendship, an act of giving and sharing.
This ideal of solidarity inspired them to work in Myanmar for the better part of the last ten years on several films. The most successful of which has been Myanmar Diaries, which won the prestigious Berlinale Documentary Award, along with fifteen other international prizes, a hybrid film about daily life in the aftermath of the 2022 military coup, made together with ten young anonymous Burmese filmmakers. A film entirely without credits, it best embodies their ideal of ego-less filmmaking: the international film team abstained from public credit out of solidarity with the anonymous Burmese filmmakers.
Over the last seven years, they have also expanded their focus to work on stories of climate justice: I Am The River, The River Is Me (2024), a film about New Zealand’s Whanganui River, the first river in the world recognized as a legal person. The other, The Coriolis Effect (2025) a creative documentary about our world spinning out of control, set in the islands of Cape Verde, the place where hurricanes are borne. These stories about the rights of nature and changing our relation to the natural world, are in line with their own values, as they live in Schoonschip in Amsterdam, the most sustainable community of floating houses in Europe, developed by a community of like-minded residents.
BEHIND THE SCENES
