Darcy Ray Flavell-Hudson
Young Vinnie and Jonah are bored on the mean streets — tagging, BMX-ing — when Jonah peer pressures Vinnie to join him in breaking and entering a house. When they find more than Christmas pressies inside, it tests mateship, moral codes and festive spirit.
It's 1984, and Michael Jackson is king - even in Waihau Bay, New Zealand. Here we meet Boy, an 11-year-old who lives on a farm with his gran, a goat, and his younger brother, Rocky (who thinks he has magic powers). Shortly after Gran leaves for a week, Boy's father, Alamein, appears out of the blue. Having imagined a heroic version of his father during his absence, Boy comes face to face with the real version-an incompetent hoodlum who has returned to find a bag of money he buried years before. This is where the goat enters.
One summer’s day, Jayde and Wiremu tag along with their older siblings on a trip to a local swimming hole; young passions ignite by the Rotorua hot pool. Later, tragedy occurs and Jayde faces lost innocence and the ritual of tangi while bearing a secret.
