Vanuatu and Australia / 2015 / 104mins / Drama, Romance / Nauvhal

Tanna is set in the South Pacific where Wawa, a young girl from one of the last traditional tribes, falls in love with her chief’s grandson, Dain. When an intertribal war escalates, Wawa is unknowingly betrothed as part of a peace deal. The young lovers run away, but are pursued by enemy warriors’ intent on killing them. They must choose between their hearts and the future of the tribe, while the villagers must wrestle with preserving their traditional culture and adapting it to the increasing outside demands for individual freedom. Tanna is based on a true story and performed by the people of Yakel in Vanuatu.

Martin Butler

Martin Butler migrated to Australia in 1981 and spent the next 25 years producing award winning documentary reports. In 2009 he teamed up with Bentley Dean to make Contact in the Western Desert of Australia. After Contact he produced First Footprints and Tanna, which won Best Feature Film of International Film Critics Week and Best Director of Photography at the 72nd Venice Film Festival. Learn More

Bentley Dean

After making a number of award-winning powerful social documentaries Bentley Dean teamed up with Martin Butler in 2009 to make Contact – a film about the last desert peoples in Australia. They made the four-part documentary series First Footprints about Australia’s 50,000-year Aboriginal history in 2013. Their 2015 drama, Tanna, received a nomination for Best Foreign Language Film at the 89th Academy Awards. Learn More