NZIFF 2025 Craccum Coverage | GRACE A Prayer for Peace

Review by Taylor Lee

“What are we, where do we come from and where are we going?” 

These are three questions echoing into the present, past and future of our shared humanity. “Grace: A Prayer for Peace” is a collaborative visual poem, a transcendental brushstroke of a film crafted between artists Dame Robin White (Ngata Awa) and Dame Gaylene Preston, following White’s creative journey through purpose, through grace. The international film debut released just days before the Hiroshima anniversary, Grace asks the audience what bridges different cultures and worlds to feel united? A return and powerful journey to understanding one’s root in White’s tribe, and how art was a guide throughout her times in an art exhibition in Japan to her years in the Republic of Kiribati. White’s call against nuclear bombing,  environmental erosion and culture weaves throughout each zoom.

The film feels like a transformative soundscape paired with vivid imagery through an artist’s life force and influence. The call of the tūī, a tearful he kotuku rerenga tahi and a tribute to the everyday life of Aotearoa and Kiribati. There is a quiet, yet fierce ripple in White’s act to converge her personal from the political, the sacred from the material. The voices around White’s own work that shaped her own: Ebonie Fifita’s Pacific material work, the childhood grief of Hiroshima’s survivors, and her Baháʼí faith, which is subtly touched upon.

White had mentioned that she didn’t feel as though Preston filming was ever there. Instead, the film felt more like a conversation and a friendship blossoming as if they had known each other for years, that just so happened to permeate through the screen. This is how the viewer, myself included, felt as we were at the festival.

This project is a beautiful tribute that reminds us how art and creation can highlight the harsh reminders and realities of humanity. It is a film that can only be experienced, through shedded tears, shared chuckles, reflective warmth and a more invigorated movement to create a world better than we left.