With great bawdiness and backbone, a rugby team made up of farmers strive to redeem themselves from a long run of bitter losses. In the face of the hefty demands of farming and fatherhood, the Saturday game becomes the focus of the men’s passions and the ground on which their worth is proved. ‘The Ground We Won’ is a highly authentic, slice of life film about the challenges and joys of manhood, as seen through the rites and rituals of a rural New Zealand rugby club.
New Zealand
New Zealand
A beautiful, at times unflattering, portrait of rural and sporting life in New Zealand’s Bay Of Plenty, photographed in stunning black and white. Despite its filmmakers’ outsider status in the community, they unearth the film’s heart in Kelvin, a curly-haired solo father of two, who is as at home in the milking shed or the kitchen as he is coaching the town’s juniors. Hopeful and real.
I genuinely disliked this so much, Thierry told us all to keep an open mind but Jesus I cannot take the raging toxic testosterone that is new zealand rugby and small town farming culture
city gals 4 lyfe
This is filled with things I hate about New Zealand: rugby culture, our really bad toxic masculinity problem, drinking culture, etc. etc. I knew I wasn't going to enjoy this from the get-go. It would have all been fine though if this documentary had a voice. Maybe if it was speaking against these things, it would have been worth my time. Instead, it's just 90 minutes of guys drinking, bullying each other, farming, and then playing rugby a few times. Also, why on earth did I have to watch a cow being born on three separate occasions?!
Director Christopher Pryor & Producer Miriam Smith are two of my favourite New Zealand filmmakers. Their first documentary project together, How Far is Heaven – about the Sisters of Compassion living in the township of Jerusalem - is in my opinion one of Aotearoa’s best documentaries of all time. And I don’t make that call lightly.
The Ground We Won – their follow up – is going to join them on that list.
Set in the farming town of Reporoa, Pryor and Smith spent a year filming the local community. Living amongst them, getting to know them, they deemed the local rugby team to be suitable documentary subjects and recorded their first season relegated to Division B after a dismal Division…
This film felt ethnographic to me. As an urban woman/vegetarian+non drinker/non fan of rugby this film helped me to understand rugby culture in NZ and set aside the fact I don’t personally like it. Seeing as I had such an outsiders perspective I wonder how people who felt represented by this film would react to it…..
Really amazing cinematography- I absolutely love the choice to use B&W and the music was great too. I really like this format and will definitely be watching more Observatory docos!!!
Who'd have thought a documentary study of masculinity in rural (primarily pākehā) New Zealand, through the lens of an ailing local rugby club, could be so sublime? Beautifully shot in monochrome by Pryor and Smith, who embed into the Reporoa community and provide fly-on-the-wall observation, THE GROUND WE WON is an humane investigation of what 21st century masculinity looks like in this context. Taking a very even-handed approach, the filmmakers eschew any sense of judgment but never shy away from the more problematic elements in their subject community. The cinematography, editing, and music choices combine to produce something of unexpectedly ethereal (if heavily beer-soaked) beauty.
"Is that the best you've got?"
"No, it isn't actually."
The game they play everywhere from heaven to the end of the earth.
Rugby has meant so much to me my entire life. But you don't have to have grown up around our great game to see the aching beauty in the action of a father reprimanding his young son for tripping a player. The universal in the intimate. The future in the past. The Spiritual. The Human. The Ground We Won. The Time We Lost.
This may end up beng more diclaimer than review, but here goes.
I know Chris and Miriam - I worked with them on their first doco HOW FAR IS HEAVEN doing the online edit. I also cut the trailer for that film with James Brookman.
On top of this, I'm good friends with colourist Alana Cotton, who graded our film JAKE and is a regular colaborator of mine.
It might also be worth noting that, not only am I not at all interested in rugby, I believe that rugby culture actually has an actively negative impact on New Zealand society. If not for the fact that this film was made by people I know, I probably wouldn't have watched it.…
There comes a point where you really must ask yourself, how much cow placenta is too much cow placenta?
