A haunting collision of taonga pūoro, orchestral dread and gothic atmosphere - a powerful sonic companion to one of Aotearoa New Zealand’s most distinctive cinematic works.

“The greatest horror is always colonisation” - The Spinoff

Pressed on world-exclusive Red & Black Marble vinyl, strictly limited to 150 copies.

Mārama, the striking debut feature from writer-director Taratoa Stappard, is a distinctly Māori Gothic horror set in a haunted North Yorkshire manor in 1859. When Māori teacher Mary Stevens (Ariāna Osborne) is summoned from Aotearoa to England with the promise of revelations about her family, she is drawn into a terrifying tale of dark family secrets and one woman's wrath in the face of colonial violence.

Taking the visual language of classic Victorian Gothic horror and redeploying it through a uniquely Māori lens, the film screens as an Australian Premiere in MIFF 2026's Night Shift strand. Composed by Karl Sölve Steven with taonga pūoro practitioner Rob Thorne (Ngāti Tumutumu, Ngāti Tamaterā, Ngāti Raukawa, Tainui Hauraki), the score merges ancient Māori instrumentation with extended orchestral textures.

Moving between suffocating tension and moments of profound cultural remembrance, it evokes both the physical horror of empire and the metaphysical presence of tūpuna watching from beyond — harrowing, mournful and ultimately transcendent.

Recorded in Aotearoa and Iceland, it combines Thorne's taonga pūoro — pūtātara, porotiti and tumutumu — with orchestral sessions by Sinfonia Nord at Stúdíó Sýrland, Reykjavík, and the rare haldorophone, performed by Júlía Mogensen, whose electroacoustic feedback lends a ghostly resonance.