Ten years on from Hunt for the Wilderpeople, Vertigo Releasing put Taika Waititi, Julian Dennison and Rachel House on a press line in London, ninety seconds at a time, ahead of an anniversary screening and Q&A. We asked each of them two questions.

What came back was three people who had not compared notes arriving at more or less the same position on small films — which is the subject of our accompanying piece, Taika Waititi’s advice to young filmmakers is to ignore Taika Waititi. This is the raw material behind it. All three interviews are printed below in full. They have been lightly edited for length and clarity — filler removed, nothing reordered, nothing added. Where something was said on stage in the Q&A rather than on the press line, it is marked as such.

Taika Waititi

Writer-director of Hunt for the Wilderpeople. His eleven-minute short Two Cars, One Night was nominated for an Academy Award in 2005, two years before his first feature.

You started in shorts. Two Cars, One Night got you an Oscar nomination before you made a feature. Do you still think of shorts as a calling card, or as a complete film in their own right?

Definitely a complete film in their own right. The difference between short stories and novels — they’re very different disciplines — but I still love the short film form. I think it’s really great. Sometimes I don’t think it’s quite the right thing to just rely on it as your sole entry point into the industry. It doesn’t work that often, especially nowadays. People don’t watch shorts as much as they used to, I think. But even that aside, it’s an incredible way of honing your skill and just getting experience. I think the main thing about anything, any discipline, is experience. You just have to try and do it again and again to get it right.

What would you tell a filmmaker sitting on a ten-minute short right now with no idea what to do with it?

Don’t listen to old people. Don’t listen to people who have done as much work as I have, because we’re old and often we’re wrong. I did listen to a few people when I was young, and I listened to some people who are in my position now, and they were wrong. I wish I’d never listened to them — some of them nearly ruined my short films. So I’m very careful of people like me.

Julian Dennison

Played Ricky Baker in Hunt for the Wilderpeople, aged thirteen. Within two years he was working on a Marvel production.

You were 13 when you shot Hunt for the Wilderpeople. What do you notice about your performance that you couldn’t have seen at the time?

Probably better than I expected it to be. That’s the beauty of it, I think — when children do films, there’s this innocence that you get.

I watch it now and think, I was a kid, I had no idea what was going on. I knew I had time off school and I was getting a paycheck — not a big one, but I liked it, and I was just enjoying it, having fun. Taika was just yelling things at me to do when we were dancing in the bush, and Sam was looking after me. So yeah, I think that’s something I didn’t realise then that I look back on now as an adult — the innocence you have as a child.

You went from a small New Zealand shoot to a Marvel-scale set within two years. What did the world of Marvel teach you that actually transferred, and what didn’t?

They’re way better snacks. Way bigger trailers. No, I think they taught me, like, this is a long game, right? One of my first bigger films, working with someone like Sam Neill, with Taika — people have been doing that for so long, and I realised, even though it was a blessing to do a movie, a blessing to do a Marvel film, this isn’t the finish line. You’ve got to keep going. So that was something I learned. And what people just say — this is what it means to make film with your friends, with people who love the craft and love telling stories that connect with people.

Rachel House

Played Paula in Hunt for the Wilderpeople and was Julian Dennison’s acting coach on the shoot. Her feature directorial debut, The Mountain, premiered in New Zealand in 2024 and screened at Toronto the same year.

You directed The Mountain — also about a kid, also the New Zealand landscape, also a runaway story. Was Wilderpeople in the back of your mind, or is that just the country’s default myth?

I feel like I’m going to get in a lot of trouble if I say that’s the country’s default myth, but yeah, there is something about that — particularly the kind of rebellion and the runaway, and most definitely the environment.

We live in a very beautiful place, and we want to continue protecting that place, a majority of us too. I hope we get loads more stories like that, that show what an incredible place we live in, and I hope that protection continues.

You’ve worked on budding indie productions like this as well as big-budget franchise films. What opportunities does a film like this present you as an actor that you may not experience on a big-budget set?

Well, I think the camaraderie, because it’s a smaller team and the cast and crew really come together. I was just talking before about a scene in the film where it wasn’t meant to snow, and it did — it came out of nowhere, and all of us came together and created this incredible one-take shot that Taika made up in that moment. I don’t know that you quite get that in a big studio film. Not that I think big studio films aren’t fantastic too, but there’s nothing like having a tight team of people who believe in the same thing and love making films.

From the Q&A

The following was said on stage after the screening, not on the press line. House described being introduced to Sam Neill for the first time. Waititi presented her as Julian’s acting coach, and Neill — forty years and a hundred credits past needing anything explained to him about acting — replied: “Maybe you could teach me at some point.” “You don’t need me, my darling,” she told him. Dennison, asked about working with House on the shoot, said the two of them were best friends on set.

Taika Waititi, Julian Dennison and Rachel House spoke to 50% Film at the Hunt for the Wilderpeople 10th Anniversary Q&A in London on 30 July 2026, with thanks to Vertigo Releasing. The screening was dedicated to the memory of Sir Sam Neill. The film returns to cinemas and digital on 7 August, and to 4K UHD on 14 August.