‘It’s a Samoan success story’: How opera doco took off in NZ
Sunday, 12 April 2026
Graeme Tuckett is the owner and operator of Crew Auckland and Crew Wellington and a regular film reviewer for the Sunday Star-Times.
A brilliant thing happened to me last Sunday, and I'm still smiling about it today.
I had planned to go and see the New Zealand film Tenor: My Name is Pati. I figured a Sunday afternoon session would be quiet enough for me to bowl up a few minutes before the show started and still get a decent seat. But, no. The 4pm screening was damn near completely sold out. I was lucky to get one of the last three seats in the house.
And yet Tenor: My Name is Pati has been playing in theatres for a month already. Plus, it's a documentary - and everybody knows 'no-one goes to see documentaries'. Don't they?
Well, no. It turns out in this brilliant, bonkers little country we live in, we absolutely love watching local documentaries. In fact, two or three of our most watched local films of all time are docos*. And I wouldn't bet against Tenor: My Name is Pati getting close to joining them.
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Tenor: My Name is Pati - in case you're one of the dwindling handful of New Zealanders who haven't seen it yet - is a story of two brothers. Pene and Amitai Pati grew up in a household in which they were expected to sing and to take their place in a family band. The boy's parents worked at an aged-care home in Auckland, and the family would perform every week for the residents. Plus, of course, church and choir are hugely important in Samoan life. As the boys became teenagers in the 1990s and early 2000s, singing wasn't optional. It was a compulsory, foundational part of life.
Pene and Amitai got noticed from an early age. They were the stand out voices in a couple of school productions, and people who could move them towards professional careers began to take notice. After-school tuition was arranged. Pene started studying at Auckland University, but a planned degree in engineering soon gave way to music. Then places were offered at a hugely prestigious music school in Wales.
Pene, Amitai and their friend - and cousin - Moses Mackay formed the vocal trio Sol3 Mio as a way to raise the funds they would need to travel and study. But Sol3 Mio became wildly successful, and soon Pene and Amitai would have to choose whether to settle for careers as pop-opera stars at home, or push on and chase success in the world's greatest concert halls.
Tenor: My Name is Pati is a hell of a yarn. It is moving, funny, spectacularly musical and, if you're anything like me, it'll put a lump in your throat at times. The film takes us from Samoa to Auckland, and then to Cardiff, Paris, Vienna, Bordeaux and, eventually, New York, for a final few scenes that had at least a few people at my screening happily sobbing.
Director Rebecca Tansley has some serious form at getting stories of artistic and musical lives onto our screens. Back in 2019, Tansley's film The Heart Dances followed the nettlesome journey of Jane Campion's The Piano from the screen to the stage, as a couple of well meaning but culturally oblivious Czech choreographers worked with the Royal New Zealand Ballet on an adaptation.
But Tenor: My Name is Pati is a very different story to The Heart Dances. It unfolds over 30 years or more, with archival footage and home movies woven through present day interviews and performances. And while The Heart Dances had to end, for better or worse, on the ballet's opening night. Tenor: My Name is Pati is a story that is still unfurling, and still being written.
So when I had the chance this week, the first thing I wanted to ask Tansley, was how did she first encounter Pene and Amitai, and then realise they had a story that needed to be told.
Rebecca Tansley: You might say I “found” the story when I was casting around for a project in 2022, but it was in the context of being a Sol3 Mio fan and having filmed Amitai when I made a film for New Zealand Opera in 2020. I was also aware of how well both brothers were doing in their careers. When I researched their story, I could see it had all the ingredients of a great film.
Graeme Tuckett: After meeting Pene and Amitai, what needed to be done, before filming could begin?
RT: A LOT of relationship-building, which is the short answer for the long process securing all the rights and permissions required. I first wrote to Pene and Amitai's management in 2022, and then flew to London to meet them. Back in New Zealand I met with and got to know the Pati family, because Pene and Amitai’s story is really the family’s story, and the whole family’s permission and trust was just as important to me and to the success of the project as Pene and Amitai’s.
At the same time I also started reaching out to production partners. Plus I was approaching the opera houses where I knew we would want to film. All of this took well over a year and a lot of travel, and a lot of late night zoom calls and sleepless nights – but thank goodness it paid off!
GT: The film has become extremely successful. Why has this story connected? How has it gone so much further than a 'story about opera singers' might have been expected to?
RT: I think our film has resonated with audiences in Aotearoa for the same reasons I was attracted to the story in the first place. To me it was never about opera or opera singers per se. Yes, it’s the story of two incredibly charismatic characters who happen to be opera stars, but it’s so much more than that. It's story of triumph over adversity. It’s a Samoan success story. It’s a story of cultural pride, of an immigrant family. It’s about the transformative power of music. But above all, I think the film moves people. As Pene says in the film – 'I think people want to feel something.' And our audiences do. They laugh. They cry. And they applaud and cheer as if they are in the room with Pene when he sings. It’s an immersive, emotional ride and a great yarn. I’m glad we found a way to tell Pene, Amitai’s and the aiga’s (family's) story in a way that did justice to all of this.
GT: How has the film been received by Samoan audiences especially, and also by the opera world? What are people taking from the film?
RT: From what I’ve experienced at screenings and heard from others, Samoan audiences really love the film. This is incredibly special to me. From the outset I was extremely aware I was a palagi film-maker telling a Samoan story and I took the responsibility that came with that privilege very seriously, including ensuring there were many Samoan voices to provide input and guidance. So to have the film embraced by the Samoan community is just so truly special. I really believe the film is not “mine”, or even “ours” (the film-making team’s) – it’s the family’s and their community’s. We are lucky they shared it with us and with the world.
Opera fans love the film too, and people from within that world have said they think it will introduce new audiences to opera. But you don’t need to love opera to enjoy the film. There’s a ton of different types of music in the film and opera is just one of them. I wanted to present opera within the whole spectrum of music which influenced Pene and Amitai, so there’s pretty much something for everyone.
In another few months, when Tenor: My Name is Pati appears on one of the streaming services, it will work just fine on a small screen. But in a cinema, with cinematographer Simon Raby's work glowing the way it should, and that soundtrack being pumped out through a bank of properly tuned speakers, it really is unmissable.
There are many reasons why documentaries do well in Kiwi cinemas. But, mostly, I think we just have great stories to tell, and some extraordinarily resilient and persistent people who still want to tell them. Tenor: My Name is Pati is a fantastic portrait of a couple of young men, and the family and community that raised them. Rebecca Tansley and her team have done some wonderful work here. If you haven't seen it yet, then make sure you do. Just check there's seats available at the cinema before you turn up…
* Calculating box office receipts versus actual bums on seats is a notoriously dark art. But, it looks as though Chasing Great: Richie McCaw, Prime Minister and The Topp Twins: Untouchable Girls at least are all safely inside the top-20 of New Zealand's most watched films.