Te Rua is an awesomely impressive achievement. And the most important thing about it may just be its insistence that it tells its story on its own terms. We would all do well to listen. – Peter Calder, NZ Herald

Debate over the repatriation of plundered indigenous art is not new, but it may be only just getting underway. Te Rua is in no doubt whatsoever about where its Maori tribal carvings, stored in the basement of a Berlin museum, truly belong. That certainty is expressed in bold, eloquent strokes – as the film opens, the tiny seaside community of Uritoto, from which the carvings have long been wrested, is photographed (beautifully, by Warwick Attewell) in an atmosphere of overcast agitation. It rains incessantly; the sea heaves mournfully about the rocks. Two sons of the tribe have coincided in Berlin and it’s as if their closeness to the carvings has opened old wounds on this side of the world. Exactly how carvings and equanimity will be restored is not so simple.
Barclay’s constantly surprising thriller plot imagines what radical action might be appropriate. He regales us with a whole range of the attitudes which render this subject contentious and make corrective action almost farcically awkward. The events in Berlin are complicated by bureaucracy, do-gooders, professional activists, and tactical differences between the militant young and their canny elders.

Obversely, Te Rua is about the white patronage of Maori interests. There’s invigorating insolence in the parallels Barclay draws between the white knights who assist the Maori cause and the white museum management who oppose it. Pakeha crave Maori-ness in this film in subtly different ways. The most enlightened know this about themselves, none more so than the outrageous Professor Biederstedt, German custodian of the carvings. Te Rua overflows with ideas, argument and provocation and its contours are certainly more jagged than those of Barclay’s earlier Ngati. In a film as richly populated as this, it’s inappropriate to isolate individual performers to praise. Suffice to say, the Maori players invest Te Rua with resounding pride and passion.
– Bill Gosden, 23rd Auckland International Film Festival