Zealandia (2017 - 2019)

Meet one of the last inhabitants of a great social experiment gone sour—an isolated 1970s hippie commune in the New Zealand wilderness.

Up until 2014, the sale of synthetic cannabis in New Zealand was considered a global test case for legalised drugs. With the introduction of tighter controls the synthetics market has gone underground, and the harm to the community has spiralled. At least 25 people are believed to have died from synthetic drug use in 2017. VICE follows animal lover and former addict Tammara, 20, as she grapples with her recovery from the drug that has dominated her life for six years. We also meet ex-user Trey whose best friend died after smoking synthetics aged just 17. Talking to family members, a former dealer, police, customs officers and an emergency medicine doctor/toxicologist, VICE investigates how and why this drug has become responsible for the deaths of New Zealanders in unprecedented numbers, revealing the raw reality of this under-reported crisis.

VICE meets a group of 14 and 15-year-olds who have already racked up a string of criminal convictions growing up among poverty, gangs and boredom under the shadow of Mt Taranaki. Some have one last chance to dodge lockup by taking part in an early intervention course for youth offenders. At home, on the streets and in the wilderness, we get to know these boys as real people, not just statistics. We also observe the relationships that form between the boys and their mentors, including Taranaki native Todd Williams who served jail time himself and is determined the teens don’t make the same mistakes he did.

Fewer than four percent of New Zealand’s population are Māori language speakers. Three teenagers from rural town Waipu have become unlikely heroes in the fight to preserve the indigenous language by making heavy metal inspired by Māori history. VICE embeds with Alien Weaponry in the build up to the release of their first album, from the garage on the de Jong family farm where brothers Henry (drums) and Lewis (vocals and guitar) and their friend Ethan Trembath (bass) rehearse, to catching the bus to high school, working at the local mechanics and bringing in the washing for mum. We also road trip to Lake Rotoiti for an overnight visit to Otaramarae where the brothers reconnect with their iwi [tribes] Ngāti Pikiao and Ngāti Raukawa. It’s a chance for the band to immerse themselves in the culture and history at the core of their music, and consider their personal part in the resurgence of te reo Māori as the language struggles for survival.

VICE gets up close and personal with a cross section of Aotearoa’s most ferocious female fighters as they prepare for the Lethal Ladies fight meet. There’s Wendy Talbot, who sleeps in her van so she can be closer to her gym, and Kelly Broerse, a former competitive ballroom dancer who’s found her true calling in the Muay Thai ring. Baby “Pitbull” Nansen, fresh from becoming the first New Zealand woman to fight at New York’s Madison Square Garden, takes us inside SMAC Gym to show how combat sports can turn lives around—just as they did for her. VICE examines the motivations and challenges of the top echelon of female fighting talent, and reveals the raw truth of exactly what it takes to get in the ring: the physical toll it takes on the body, the mental toll it takes on the mind. “You’re getting in the ring with someone who wants to beat the crap out of you,” says Broerse. “It’s terrifying.”Read Less

Sex workers in New Zealand have the most legal rights of anywhere in the world. VICE goes into high-end brothels, solo home operations, and on the freezing, cold streets and finds an industry of extremes and lingering stigma.

VICE investigates the female experience of New Zealand politics, embedding with three women from across the political spectrum to find out what it’s like to be a female politician in 2018.

In Deportees of Tonga: Gangsters in Paradise, VICE embeds with four Tongan nationals who have been sent back to the tiny island nation where they were born after serving prison time in New Zealand and the United States. Former gang members, they often struggle to reconnect with the culture, the language, and the people. They are haunted by the stigma of their criminal pasts, which casts a pall over their employment prospects and puts a barrier between them and their compatriots. Government support for returnees is non-existent, wages are low, and with Tonga in the midst of a methamphetamine crisis, the temptations to revert to the lives of crime they hoped to leave behind when they left prison are high.Read Less