In late nineteenth-century America, Rising Free portrays the story of a young woman living in the aftermath of racial prejudice. Surrounded by danger of being sold and further stripped of freedom, she discovers hope through a gracious family and learns forgiveness and overwhelming mercy from her own transformation.
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...