Directed by Wiftie Vea Mafile’o (New Zealand) and Gavin Fitzgerald (Ireland), the new feature documentary LOMU traces rugby legend Jonah Lomu’s journey from the streets of South Auckland to the biggest stages in world rugby, charting his meteoric rise, cultural impact, and the private struggles that unfolded behind the legend.
The film features at the NZIFF and opens to general audiences across Aotearoa next month.
The wonderful folk at Madman have 5 double passes on offer for WIFT NZ members and if you'd like to be in to win, email us here office@wiftnz.org.nz and answer this simple question:
Q: How old was Jonah Lomu wheh he played first international for the All Blacks in 1994?
Good luck!
To celebrate the film's release, the extraordinarily talented Vea has gifted us all an insight into her process and journey making Lomu, and shares those with us below.
Vea Mafile’o
LOMU
Q: Vea, what an incredible atmosphere at the mighty Civic for the NZIFF premiere - how
did it feel to be in the room and share Jonah's story?
VEA: The Civic was pretty overwhelming. We had just come back from screening LOMU to around
8,000 people at Teufaiva, and then suddenly we were in this beautiful, iconic theatre
surrounded by Jonah’s family, our families and crew.
I wanted it to be more than just a screening, to create an immersive experience worthy of
someone like Jonah. We had the Wesley College Tongan choir; Tongan group, Jonah’s
limited-edition photographs and trophies on display, and this beautiful installation by sound
artist Sione Faletau using recordings of Jonah and his mum and dad. He created kupesi
patterns generated from the sound bites that were projected through the entrance and onto
the ngatu ʻuli hanging in the foyer.
Those elements really set the tone and vibe for the night. And having Hepi there, and 80
members of his family, seeing everything come together and feeling the response
afterwards, I could finally breathe a little and think, Okay, we did it.
KR: This has been a big project and a special story to tell - and one that has taken many
years to bring to the big screen - how would you describe the experience both as a
storyteller and personally?
VEA: It has probably been one of the biggest filmmaking journeys of my life. There were moments
where the film stopped completely, moments where we didn’t know what would happen next,
and plenty of moments where I wondered how we were ever going to get it across the line.
It’s been pretty wild.
As a storyteller, it reinforced for me that the bigger the subject, the more interested I am in
the small human moments. You can have all the scale, fame and spectacle in the world, but
ultimately I’m always looking for the emotional connection.
Personally, I don’t think I anticipated how deeply involved I would become. Somewhere
along the way it stopped feeling like just a film and became something I felt a real
responsibility to protect and carry. And I’ve come out of it with relationships I never expected
Jonah’s family now feels like family to me. That’s probably been the greatest gift of the whole
experience.
KR: What part of Jonah's story resonated the most with you?
VEA: Definitely the 15-year-old Jonah returning to Tonga. Seeing this huge figure that the world knows as almost superhuman, but as a teenager speaking fluent Tongan, crying and talking about his aunty and how much Tonga meant to him, that unlocked something for me. I understood that love. It’s difficult to articulate because it isn’t necessarily something you explain intellectually. It’s a feeling. that connection to family, place and belonging. That was the moment where I thought, there he is. It gave me a way into understanding
Jonah that went beyond everything I already knew about him.
KR: Working so closely with Jonah's family, especially his amazing mother Hepi, how
did that relationship inform the story you wanted to tell?
VEA: Hepi and I were a slow burn. I had to earn her trust, and things really changed after she
watched "For My Father’s Kingdom". Through that film she understood who my dad was,
where I came from and my relationship with Tongan culture and family. Those connections
are really important to Tongans.
Our first interview was in English, at Hepi’s insistence, and it was quite hard. I’m really glad
Gav pushed for us to interview her again in Tongan because she completely relaxed and we
saw so much more of her personality and emotion.
As we went deeper into the story, I realised Hepi could also carry a lot of the film’s emotional
connection to Jonah because he’s no longer here to tell his own story. Through the archive
we watch her grow and age alongside him, from this young mother through everything that
followed. There’s something incredibly universal about the love of a mother for her child, you
don’t have to be Tongan or know anything about rugby to connect with that.
People have spoken about Jonah and his family for decades, so I wanted Hepi to have the
space to tell her own story in her own way. By the end my baseline became pretty simple: if
Mum is happy, we’re good. When John finally called after the family watched the finished
film and said, “Mum approves,” I burst into tears.
KR:The challenges of making a film are immense, the challenges of making a film about
such a globally known sportsman even more so - what was the hardest of those
challenges - and the most satisfying and nourishing?
VEA: The hardest part was navigating how many people have ownership, emotional or otherwise
over Jonah Lomu. He means something different to his family, rugby, New Zealand, Tonga,
South Auckland and fans around the world. Even within a family there are different
memories and perspectives. You quickly realise there is no version of this story that will
make absolutely everybody happy. At some point I had to accept that our responsibility was to make the most truthful film we could while caring for the people who trusted us with their stories.
The most nourishing part has been taking it back into community. Teufaiva especially was
extraordinary - thousands of Tongans gathering to celebrate Jonah, Hepi being honoured by
the Crown Prince, our local crew being acknowledged, Tongan musicians performing. It
became much bigger than a screening.
That’s probably the part of filmmaking I love most, when the film stops belonging to you and
starts belonging to the people watching it.
KR: What an incredible treasure trove of archival footage to plunder - both sporting-
wise and from Jonah's personal and family life - how was that process?
VEA: There actually wasn’t as much footage of Jonah himself as you might imagine. What I loved
about the family archive was that it became this incredible time capsule of Tongan
community life, funerals, weddings, cultural performances, family gatherings, the building of
the Tuingapapai (Free Wesleyan Church of Tonga) and of course all the hairstyles and
fashion through the years, which were pretty hilarious.
Then amongst all of that you’d suddenly catch these beautiful ordinary moments of Jonah
mucking around with family, cooking pigs in the backyard, just being part of this community.
I loved that because the archive wasn't only documenting Jonah, it was documenting the
world that shaped him. And in some ways those ordinary moments told us as much about
him as the extraordinary sporting footage did.
KR: What was key to finding that storytelling balance within the complex nature of
family, of fame, of culture and against the backdrop of the physicality and profile of
elite high performance sport?
VEA: I think the key was always coming back to the human being. There are so many different films you could make about Jonah Lomu. You could make an incredible film purely about rugby, or fame, or his health, or his Tongan identity, or his family.
Our job was somehow to allow all those things to coexist because that's how they existed in Jonah.
Gav and I brought different experiences, instincts and perspectives to the material, but we
were both shaping the same emotional story. It wasn't a case of separating culture from
rugby or family from fame, all of those things constantly collided in Jonah's life.
For me, culture was also never something I wanted to stop the film and explain. It needed to
live naturally within the family relationships, the archive, the music, the language and the
choices people made.
Ultimately, whenever things became complicated, the question was: What does this tell us
about Jonah? If it brought us closer to understanding the person rather than simply adding to
the legend, then it belonged.
ENDS