This is the subject of Marimari, a powerful and moving documentary that looks at the current issue of sorcery violence in Papua New Guinea, created by a crew of Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington staff and alumni, directed by Associate Professor Paul Wolffram. It spotlights Evelyn Kunda, an indigenous human rights defender working to support survivors of sorcery accusation related violence (SARV).
Sanguma, or sorcery violence, is a relatively new phenomenon in Papua New Guinea. Marimari follows Evelyn as she supports survivors who have been forced to leave their villages after being accused of sanguma—witchcraft and sorcery—and threatened with violence and death.
Every year it’s estimated up to 200 people are killed due to sorcery violence, and dozens more are left badly injured. As Marimari shows, entire families are forced to flee their homes and villages after being accused of sorcery due to a death in the village.
Despite great risk to herself, and running a bare-bones operation, Evelyn provides support to these families as they try to rebuild their lives with no resources, significant trauma, and a stigma that follows them as they try to find safety.
The origin of Marimari
While Marimari was born from Paul's long relationship with Papua New Guinea, it wasn't until 2018 that he began the work towards shooting footage for it, thanks to a University grand and a fortunate meeting with Evelyn Kunda, Marimari's protagonist.
Paul was studying ethnomusicology at the New Zealand School of Music—Te Kōkī when he first went to Papua New Guinea in the early 2000s, returning every couple of years after that.
Spending a year and a half in a little village in the rainforest was “amazing and challenging and difficult,” he says. “I’ve had malaria about six times in my life so far.” While living in a village without health services or power, Paul learned the local indigenous language, as well as Tok Pisin, the lingua franca that connects the 800 different languages in Papua New Guinea.
In 2017 he was confronted with the issue of sanguma, while teaching a course at the University of Goroka in Papua New Guinea.
“I'd read about sorcery violence,” he says, “but in Goroka I couldn't get over how prevalent it was. That's when I decided to try and do something with my filmmaking skills, and language and cultural skills to see if I could contribute to anti-sorcery violence stuff. This whole idea that people are accusing each other of being witches in 2025, right? It’s hard to get your head around.”
Finding the story
Paul questioned how to tell the story initially. “How to tell it in such a way that there’s some hope in it. Because it's very easy to become burdened with how prevalent this thing is. Where do you start?
“When I came home from that trip and started to process the footage and understand what I was getting, I saw somebody who had no resources and no money. But she was still doing something about the issue, whereas the government officials and the NGOs I was talking to were like, ‘oh this problem is so big. We don't know how to do anything.’ And here was Evelyn with nothing and still doing something. That’s where the story was.”
A return trip scheduled for 2020 was cancelled due to the pandemic, and Paul made a short film called Wildfire from the footage he already had. Wildfire screened at the Doc Edge Festival and a few other places. The short film tries to show how the locals understand the issue of sanguma.
From this proof of concept, the University then provided support for the feature length Marimari, alongside the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade, and the Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung (KAS) Pacific.
Working with the locals in Papua New Guinea
One of the challenges Paul had to consider is the question of what does informed consent look like when you’re working with people who have never seen a cinema?
“When you say to people in Papua New Guinea, ‘I want to make a feature film and I want to show your story to the world’, they have no idea how it's going to be received—how an audience in New York is going to understand the meaning of the film,” says Paul.
“With Evelyn, initially, we talked and talked again. She gradually built a picture of what it's like and what a film is. And we bought her over during the edit in 2023 to sit with us and to see how the film was coming together, to give us her thoughts and feelings on the story. She had all sorts of really useful perspectives to bring in at that stage with the survivor families.”
Making a film in that ethnographic style takes a lot of trust, and nothing is done quickly, Paul says. “You've got to bring the people you're working with along with you to let them understand what you're trying to achieve, what the risks are for them, what they can choose to do.
“The people I'm working with know me really well. We don't go in and start shooting, we go in and and talk, so by the time I went up there with my cinematographer, I knew all of the families a little bit and then built on those relationships before we started filming together.”
Raising money for Evelyn and the survivors
One of the goals for Marimari is to raise money to build a safehouse for Evelyn to work from. When survivors of sorcery violence are forced to flee their homes, they often find themselves with nowhere to go.
“A lot of the time she's taking these people into her own house,” Paul says, “which ends up putting her in a difficult situation and also putting her in danger in her own community.”
Proceeds from ticket sales go directly towards funding the safehouse, with the goal of raising $80,000 by the end of 2025 to secure land and build the safehouse for survivors. You can also donate to the safehouse here.
Another aspect of the film is a profit share model with the survivor families. Any money that the film makes from distribution on streaming services will be shared between the crew and the participants.
“It would be really nice if I'm able to go back there next year and to give those families some money that will help their situations. You've got to make sure that you're treating your subjects with real care. You’ve got to be the protector and advocate,” says Paul.
After watching the film, a small group of generous backers has pledged to support Evelyn with an income for at least the next four years. This means she no longer has to sell produce from her garden or make bilum (woven bags) to feed the families she helps, allowing her to focus on the work of rehabilitating and advocating for survivors.
“Often when people are so deeply traumatised like that, they can't really think about what’s best for themselves,” says Paul. “That's why they need people like Evelyn, who are counselling them through that, being their friend. That's important too.”
What’s next for Marimari
Marimari premiered in Whanau Marama, the NZ International film festival, to sold out audiences in Wellington. The film has also screened at the Hawaii International Film Festival and at FIFO (Festival International du Film documentaire Océanien) in Tahiti. Paul is currently in Papua New Guinea, after being in Canberra where the film was screened to Embassy staff, NGOs and government in Australia’s capital. The goal is to also sell it to a streaming service to reach an even bigger audience.
While Marimari is aimed at Western audiences, the crew also produced a series of TikTok videos aimed at locals, particularly young men who are the perpetrators of sorcery violence. The six videos, made in Tok Pisin, have already garnered over one million views on TikTok, and Paul is currently in the Highlands of Papua New Guinea for six weeks to continue the ‘Stap Isi Wantaim—look after each other’ brand of the Marimari project.
The ‘Stap Isi Wantaim’ TikTok project relates to the research Paul has been doing over the last few years about how to communicate and change behaviour in a community. “It's really not an easy thing to do,” he says. “You cannot push directly back against belief and say, ‘your beliefs are wrong’. That just closes people's minds to you. You've got to insert questioning strategies.“
Their immediate explanation when somebody dies is to jump to sorcery. But then you introduce cognitive complexity. You say ‘oh, it could be sorcery, but could it also be that he had diabetes and didn't look after himself? Could it be that his heart was no good? Could it be that he never maintained his car and he drove it off the road because he was drunk at the same time?’”
If you can get people to open up to the possibility of other explanations, then you insert doubt into their thinking, Paul says. “It pauses people from moving to violence.”
Film at the University
“We have a pretty amazing film programme here,” says Paul. “We certainly punch above our weight to create a film that will go and play internationally in top festivals and make it on these platforms from a film programme of seven people.”
“Documentaries have a clear history of being able to literally change the world. You can change the way that people perceive a subject or even bring it into the realm of understanding like Marimari hopefully does. And with that comes pressures on governments to bring about change. These things can bring about real impact on societies.”
You can donate to the safehouse for Evelyn Kunda and the survivors of sorcery violence here and learn more about the film here.