The Review: ‘Holy Days’ Finds Heart in the Hills of 1970s New Zealand

July 28, 2026

0Points

In the mid-1970s, on New Zealand’s South Island, a grieving Māori boy named Brian (Elijah Tamati) finds unlikely refuge among three elderly nuns living in a crumbling convent on the brink of closure. When plans emerge to sell the property out from under them, the sisters and the boy pile into a “borrowed” car and set off on a chaotic, freewheeling road trip to reclaim the deed—and, along the way, pieces of themselves. That is the simple, warmly familiar setup of Holy Days, the feature directorial debut of New Zealand actress-turned-filmmaker Nathalie Boltt, adapted from Dame Joy Cowley’s novel.

What could have been pure formula becomes something more affecting thanks to its exceptional lead performances and the luminous landscape that frames them. Judy Davis (Sister Agnes), Jacki Weaver (Sister Mary Clare), and Miriam Margolyes (Sister Luke) form a delightfully mismatched trio: one sharp-tongued and cigarette-sneaking, one gently practical, one drifting into the fog of dementia yet still capable of mischief. They never tip into caricature. Instead they feel lived-in and specific, the kind of women who have spent decades quietly holding a community together and now refuse to go quietly into obsolescence. Young Elijah Tamati, in his screen debut, anchors the film with an unforced, heartbreaking sincerity. His Brian is not a precocious scene-stealer but a child still raw with loss, clinging to the nuns because they offer the only steady warmth left in his life after his mother’s death and his father’s new relationship.

Boltt’s direction keeps the tone light without becoming weightless. The comedy is dry and character-driven—dentures, slow driving, the occasional glass of wine, and a running gag involving fruitcake—rather than broad slapstick. The road-trip structure allows for both gentle misadventures and quieter moments of connection: grief shared across generations, the complicated history of the Church in New Zealand, and Brian’s deeper Māori spiritual ties to the land, particularly the sacred mountain Aoraki/Mount Cook that becomes his personal destination.

The film is not without soft spots. The plot machinery is sometimes overly tidy, the obstacles a touch manufactured, and certain thematic strands remain more gestured at than fully explored. A late hallucinatory sequence in a snowstorm reaches for transcendence that the rest of the movie’s more grounded style doesn’t quite prepare for.

Holy Days won’t reinvent the road-trip genre, but it travels the familiar route with enough heart, humor, and scenic grace to make the journey worthwhile.