Skip to main content
Filmarian
All films
Poster for Whale Rider
Sign in to rateBe the first to rate
+ write a review
Released
2003 · FILM

Whale Rider

A determined twelve‑year‑old Māori girl fights to claim her tribe’s leadership, defying a patriarchal grandfather who refuses to see her as the rightful heir.

In the ways of the ancients she found a hope for the future.

Directed by
Rated
MPA · PG-13
Runtime
101 min
DramaFamily

Synopsis

A contemporary story of love, rejection, and triumph follows a young Māori girl as she strives to fulfill a destiny that her grandfather refuses to acknowledge.

Related titles

No curated related titles yet. Use the edit affordance to add "More from this director", "Same franchise", or "Adaptation source material" entries — every change goes through the wiki review queue.

How many hands made this film

The scale of the collaboration

Principal cast & crew: 27

These are the principals we have on file — the full crew ran to the hundreds. Every film this size was made by far more hands than any credits list ever names.

Why a floor?

This is a minimum, not a total. We only count the credits we’ve captured so far, and coverage is uneven — a blockbuster might show a few hundred names while another of the same size shows a couple dozen. The real crews all ran into the thousands. The number here only grows as full credits are enriched — so we frame it as a floor, never a headcount.

Craft leads on file

Edited by David CoulsonShot by Leon NarbeyScored by Lisa GerrardDesigned by Grant Major

Box Office

2003 · Box office

Produced on a $8.0M budget

Production budget

$8.0M

Also known as

  • Te Kaieke Tohoraen
  • Païfr
  • La ragazza delle baleneit

Community tags

Be the first to tag this page — tags appear right away. Try a theme, capability, or subject (e.g. WWII, heist, slow burn, time travel, A24).