ABOUT THIS PROJECT

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Public Nuisance follows Ngāpuhi and Ngāti Kahu kaumatua and environmental campaigner Mike Smith — alongside his partner, artist and filmmaker Hinekaa Mako — as he takes powerful companies and the Government to the highest court in the land.

What begins as a David-and-Goliath legal action against six of New Zealand’s biggest emitters becomes something stranger and more urgent when the Government moves to shut the case down by Act of Parliament.

From the courtroom onto the streets to the rural backroads of Aotearoa, the film traces the collision of law, science, culture and political power — and ends in the quiet, almost unbearable courage of a community that has decided to move.

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