‘We Were Dangerous’ Team on How New Zealand’s Early 20th Century Eugenics Movement Inspired Sterilization Plot in Taika Waititi-Produced SXSW Film

variety.com:

Jennifer Maas TV Business Writer “We Were Dangerous” is a surprisingly funny film for a movie that’s central conflict is the sterilization of a group of young women on the fringes of society in 1950s New Zealand.

Knowing the project, which debuted at SXSW in Austin March 8, is executive-produced by from Taika Waititi and Carthew Neal’s Piki Films certainly informs how the film approaches its troubling topic — much like the production company’s Holocaust-set “Jojo Rabbit” — with such levity, the majority of the credit for the heartfelt tone goes to a trio of women: writer Maddie Dai, director Josephine Stewart-Te Whiu and producer Morgan Waru. “We Were Dangerous” stars Erana James, Nathalie Morris and Manaia Hall as the three girls being held in a delinquent program by a matron (played by Rima Te Wiata).

And though the film revolves around female solidarity, the seed that sparked “We Were Dangerous,” which marks the directorial debut for Stewart-Te Whiu and the first screenplay written by Dai, was actually a story about Dai’s great great grandfather, who was imprisoned on an island in New Zealand — much like we find our heroines in the film. “I started researching that a little more and found a lot of interesting stuff around the treatment of people on the fringes, whether it was New Zealand’s eugenics movement at the beginning of the 20th century to lot of hysteria accusations around young women,” Dai told Variety. “But I always knew I wanted to write a story about teenage girls.