My name is Sofia. I’m 14 years old and I’m lost. My mother vanished inside the boarding school where she works, and my father just tried to commit suicide under strange circumstances. Next to him, an Ouija board. I used it during a terrifying seance, and the ghost of my mother told me to look for her. Everything is clear to me now. My name is Sofia. I’m 14 years old and I’m going to enroll at the boarding school to find the body of my mother.
Taratoa Stappard’s brooding debut feature plunges us into the dour moors of 1859 North Yorkshire, where the British Empire’s reach casts long and twisted shadows. Mary Stevens (Ariāna Osborne), a young Māori teacher from Aotearoa (New Zealand), arrives in search of family truths, only to find the man who summoned her already dead and no clear path home. Stranded in an unfamilia...