Doc Edge 2025: We Are the Water (dir. Stephanie Guest) | Review
“We are the water, the water is us.” With this poetic short film, director Stephanie Guest offers a tender and powerful plea from within the Tautoro community of New Zealand.
Premiered at the Doc Edge Festival in New Zealand, which is currently celebrating its 20th edition, We Are the Water (Ko Tātou Te Wai) by Stéphanie Guest is a film of rare delicacy — poetic, political, and profoundly human. Rooted in the Tautoro community of Te Taitokerau, in the northern reaches of Aotearoa New Zealand, this collective documentary gives voice to a Māori community bound by a deep, living connection to the spring waters of Te Mata — waters that flow through them both literally and symbolically.
“We are the water, the water is us:” through this guiding mantra, the people of Tautoro speak as one, in interviews marked by tenderness, and quiet strength. The film’s editing flows with the same grace as the waters it honours, revealing a rich mosaic of faces, stories, and songs — orero and karakia — that echo a worldview in which water is not just a resource, but a living being, an ancestor, a sacred link across generations.
The subtle animations by Heneriata Te Whata breathe into the images the pulse of the wind, the murmur of the river, the memory held in the elements. With quiet grace, they accompany the community’s voices and evoke what words alone cannot express: the spirit of water.
In a time of climate upheaval, the film is a powerful reminder of the urgent need to protect this cradle of life. To endanger the river is to endanger life itself. With empathy and restraint, this documentary bears the sensitive mark of a filmmaker intimately connected to her subject.
This is a film to see — and to share — in schools, in community spaces, wherever dialogue flows, so that one simple truth may take root: every river deserves protection, and every community deserves to be heard.
“Together, let us reclaim the waters that sustain us, and forge a future where every drop is cherished, and every community thrives,” writes director Stéphanie Guest in her statement.
Doc Edge Festival is celebrating 20 years of “Life Unscripted” from 25 June to 13 July 2025 in Auckland. Revisit our on-site coverage of last year’s edition here.
