It’s 1974 and three old nuns live in a very dilapidated old convent above a small rural town in New Zealand. Connected to the building is an equally worn out rectory where a cantankerous priest lives. Still intent on serving the community the nuns are unaware that the priest, local bishop and a greedy property developer are eager to sell the place and kick the sisters out. Brian is a young part Māori boy from the town still mourning the death of his mum and isn’t happy his Pakeha dad is engaged to someone new. In order to get away from home he commits various innocuous sins so he can see penance and solace with the local nuns. When Brian discovers the plot to sell the convent, he and the sisters go on a road trip to find the best way to stop the plan.
This is a heartwarming film that is engagingly told and shot. The cast work really well together and Tamati certainly holds his own among his more experienced co-stars.
One or two road trip tropes that could easily have been cliches, such as encountering the police, and later losing control of the car, are handled with a tongue in cheek humour that it’s all rather charming.
I did wonder why two of the nuns had to have Irish accents, after all, Catholicism has been here for almost 200 years, and there was at least one, I assume accidental, inclusion of technology that certainly wasn’t around in 1970s New Zealand.
The film hints at a darker side of history in a scene where Brian is being comforted by Sister Mary Clare. She refers to the ‘bad old days’ when unmarried pregnant women were ‘treated cruelly’ but she doesn’t attribute blame to anyone in particular and states that the convent took the women and their children in and looked after them.
Given the reality of what the Church and some of its servants really did in many such circumstances across the world and in Aotearoa this seemed curious.
If taken at face value however, Holy Days has a very nice vibe and a comedic undercurrent where even the ‘baddies’ were more bumbling than nasty and so the overall impression is of an engagingly sweet story with a good dollop of old fashioned emotion.
HOLY DAYS
Starring: Miriam Margolyes, Judy Davis, Jacki Weaver, Craig Hall, Jonny Brugh, Elijah Tamati, Candace Milner, Nathalie Boltt
Directed by: Nathalie Boltt
Duration: 104 minutes
In New Zealand cinemas 2026
