The Return

During the tattooing ceremony of a SAMOAN WOMAN by an obscured SAMOAN TATTOOIST, LUPESINA is rejected for not speaking Samoan. After confronting her mother, she navigates traumatic childhood memories as well as her current reality; she is dead.

Facing judgements about her mixed heritage, she returns to the Samoan women who shunned her and the Samoan Tattooist, revealed as another version of herself.  Defiant, Lupesina claims the tattooing tool and a door opens to The Gateway. Samoan tattoos appear on her legs and Lupesina leaps toward her return home.

Credits
Writer: Marina Alofagia McCartney
Producer: Alex Lovell, Eldon Booth
Executive Producer: Marina Alofagia McCartney
Director of Photography: Andrew McGeorge
Editor: Alex Boyd
Production Designer: Emily Mafile’o
Sound Designer: Tom Scott-Toft
Art Director: Glenn Blomfield
Visual Effects: OHUfx

Plays in

PACIFIC CINEWAVES

From the perspectives of women and children across the Pacific Islands, these six narrative shorts offer an absorbing exploration of the unwavering bonds that sustain us.